The SIW has 7 operating locos 4 geeps 2 GE 70 tonners that usually operate as a consist and an 0-6-0 dockside steamer thst usually appears at the holidays.
I can only run maybe two locos at a time and like having one or two others idling.
So my question is how many locos do you own (not countin some non dcc shelf queens )and how many do you actually run?
I think there is no correct answer to this question. More personable than anything! I have 30 locomotives. I decided that would be the magic number. Can’t buy a new one unless I get rid of another. Having enough for your layout to operate, plus a couple is, I think, a good way to judge the correct number.
The other obvious answer to that is when it starts to hurt your finances, you have bought too many!
I have about as many as Zumf but I’m currently in-between layouts. A fella in a MRRing club I used to belong to claimed to have over 400 locomotives - all STILL in their boxes - and he didn’t even have a layout at home. To me - that’s WAAAAY too many locomotives.
He also bought just about any locomotive type/RR line that appealed to him. I mainly concentrate on one prototype (NYC) so that helps limit the amount of locomotive purchases I make.
Tom
Hello all,
The equation is N+1.
N being the current number of your collection: locomotives, snowplows, cabeese, rolling stock, mountain bikes, skis, snowboards, RC vehicles, vintage cars, cats, dogs, et al.
One (1) being the number added to the current collection!
My current roster of locomotives, if put end to end, would occupy all the trackage on my 4’X8’ HO scale pike.
“She who must be obeyed” will allow me more locomotives, but she will not allow me to expand beyond the current space for a layout.
That being said, I can run a 4-uinit coal drag on the mainline (GP40s), a 3-unit coal shuttle up a 3% grade (GP30s) and several switchers (44-ton, 70-ton and a SW1500 cow & calf unit) simultaneously.
I have a simple DCC system with a 5-amp booster.
Hope this helps.
Post Script: For the record “She” owns 3 mountain bikes and two sets of skis and we just adopted our fourth dog! N+1 seems to work for her too!
J.J.
Yes of course. In the moment you realize that you don´t remember how much you have, it´s too much. Or when you realize that you only run the same locomotives over and over again while the rest is resting inside the boxes.
I have 18 locomotives so far, and with my last purchase in September 2016, my fleet is finally complete after it was started back in September 1989 . I´m not a collector. I just wanna have the trains that I love, and when I have them, I´m done. To be honest there are still 7 locomotives left that I would like to have, but the only reasons why I don´t have them yet is simply that satisfying models of these prototypes haven´t been produced yet and that some prototypes will most certainly never be produced as models at all because they´re either too unknown or are from countries where model railroading isn´t existant.
I can’t have too many engines because all engines that go to staging get rotated off the layout. While my layout is an ISL, it is only a very small part of a much larger railroad. On a large railroad the same engines would not reappear at the same location day after day.
Yes. Or, no.
I originally thought three, maybe five, would be my upper limit, especially when I learned that many have several totes of unused engines, sometimes hundreds of them. Now, with my own stable nearing 30, I’m beginning to wonder when/how it will end. I keep finding a strong interest in a story, or in a photo I see, and I want to replicate that scenario on my layout.
As an example, I’m currently painting the far wall in my 9’X18’ layout space. It will feature the Comox and Cliffe Glaciers and surrounding hills. Once I decided on that theme, I felt I needed to have the Comox Logging and Railway Co. represented since it built the towns of Fanny Bay, Royston, Cumberland, Courtenay, and Comox, where I live. What to get? Perused my favourite sites and found the Rivarossi HO Heisler on sale at Micro Mark. With LokSound. I had to have it…simply, that’s what my purchases have all had as the impetus.
In conclusion, as long as I am looking for ideas, I’m going to be needing something in the way of rolling stock to fill them. Sometimes, it means I have to purchase. Unfortunately, I’m an ideas man. [8D] Okay, okay…fortunately, I’m an ideas man. [:P]
When I started in HO (1951) I was happy with one locomotive. I was in Heaven by the 70s with four. Over the years I lost it, my inventory shows 77 working locomotive. Most of the expansion came during the 2000s, I got into restoring clunkers. I say I’ve lost it because my current layout (started 1988) was designed for single locomotive operation before DCC was in my future. One locomotive is all I would need but my display shelving sure looks good to me.
I added a hidden siding that lets me run two trains one at a time.
To me there doesn’t seem to be a limit, it’s your model railroad running under your rules.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
IMHO,yes many of us buys locomotives we don’t really need simply because they caught our eye and the price was right and—well you know the out come.
Over the last year I sold off my excess locomotives and have a dealer interested in buying my older BB,Roundhouse,Bev-Bel etc cars at a attractive price. Even though this would be a golden opportunity to upgrade my freight car fleet I’m not sure I want to sell my IPD boxcar collection. OTOH at my age it might be a good idea to trim the excess baggage…
How many is too many? That depends on how they are to be used, which is layout and modeler specific.
My layout can hide 16 freights, plus another dozen or so in cassette storage. A few are doubleheaders, but most are not. Then there are five locos committed to JNR passenger service (2 steam, 2 motors, 1 diesel-hydraulic) and a few spares of each type to cover for locos in scheduled maintenance. The JNR is adequately covered and I see no additions or subtractions in the forseeable future.
The TTT, my coal-hauling mountain goat trail, has no hidden staging in the accepted meaning of the term. I can hide a couple of the coal units that cover my empties in/loads out at the top of the hill loadout, which also accounts for an additional 2 JNR juice motors. I have a sizeable collection of small tank locos and a couple of articulateds. Some are obviously stored serviceable, destined to be cobbled into another articulated or two, available for the winter coal rush or if any of the currently-running teakettles die. This is very much in line with the practices of the coal-originating roads in Hokkaido at the time I am modeling. (Buy up other lines’ retired locos at scrap prices, then squeeze a few more revenue kilometers out of them, cannibalize them to keep their sisters in service and hope for an uptick in scrap prices.) There will be no additions to the TTT roster, but may well be subtractions…
Which doesn’t mean I won’t buy another locomotive. I recently added five - kitbash fodder, destined for the Kashimoto Forest Railway. One N scale USRA 0-6-0 will become a model of Ikasa Railway #21, The other four are N scale heavy critters which will be re-detailed as HOe light critters. I still need several short-wheelbase 2-truck N scale diesels, one for kitbashing into the forest railway’s ‘big engine,’ the others to serve as the bases for Harukawa Gorge Railway juice motors. Both the K
I depends on a number of factors, usch as the size of your layout, number of staging and switching yards, type of railroad ( flat or mountanous), etc.
My N scale layout is 121/2 X 39 feet with a center peninsula containing an operating hump yard with 10 classification tracks, 3 arrival and 3 departure tracks, 4 other smaller classification yards and a 10 track staging yard. It has the valley and a mountain divisions. I run long trains that require multiple engines, so my 100+ locomotives are not too many for me.
Okay do maybe 7 locos is notvso many but I don’t have much more storage.
Yes one can have “too many” locomotives. One can have “too many” of any type of rolling stock. And I suspect many of us do. The real issue is … what do we do about that? Let them sit and do nothing? Sell them? Give them away to a deserving beginner?
Dave Nelson
I have three Athearn Genesis F unit lashups, two ATSF, one MKT, one Roundhouse 2-6-0, an Athearn Genesis GP7 ATSF, and an Atlas RS3 SSW, I’m considering purchasing a Bachmann SF 4-4-0 that was released earlier this year.
In my case I have: 8 GP20s, 2 F7As (both passenger units. One of these is the first locomotive drive that I ever purchased. The shell has been replaced a couple of times, but the drive is still the original.), 2 F7Bs (one passenger, one freight), 2 GP35s, a GP30, 2 GP18s, an SD45 (It is the most recently obtained. It is still in the workshop in order to redo the cab and the handrails to match its proper prototype. I have the parts but it is not currently on the active list.), 3 S-4s, an SW1, an SW1000, 3 SW7s, and 4 2-6-0 steamers. Unless something really spectacular comes up, I think I’m done with engines. The layout, as it stands, is about 12 ft wide by 16 ft or so long. For that size, I probably have a few too many. (The S-4s and the steamers are for an planned expansion that I don’t know if ever will happen.)
All of these are DC as I have no desire to go DCC. On the steamers especially I don’t see how I would DCC them anyway.
I’m nearing 150. I wish I had the 20 or so I sold as a teenager to spend on cute girls, however I’m currently duplicating my B.L.I. collection with “smokers” and would like to recoup a little by selling the older non smokers if any one’s interested.
Locomotives, I don’t know, but we specifically have too few powered B units. Just saying.
Not nearly enough B unit hostling goin’ on.
All my B units are powered?
I have about 135 powered units, but considering most of my trains are pulled by 3-4 diesels or two steamers, that only represents 30 or 40 trains. The layout is designed to stage 30 trains.
When you model the early 50’s, an ABBA set of F units is really just “one” locomotive…
Sheldon
To bad you’re talking about me, because it’s almost the same number I have. I dubbed in other roads too. Like the Penn Central, NYC, and others listed below.
I also have a few locomotives in the 1950s-1970s. I just had to buy the Amtrak SDP40F.
I model 1998-2007 in Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Amtrak.
1987-1995 Santa Fe, Burlington Northern, Conrail, Southern Pacific,… as listed above.
I have more Amtrak equipment than freight locomotives that I listed. But I do have more BNSF freight cars than railroad diesels.
I thinking of quitting soon on buying freight cars and start building but that never goes out well.
How many do I have? More than I need. Dozens. Exactly how many I just don’t know and don’t want to count. Many are leftovers from my old DC layout which I decided were not worth retrofitting with decoders or they have the oversized Rivarossi flanges which don’t do well on the code 83 track of my current layout. A few even have the old horn hook couplers. A few are fairly new but need repair. I’m guessing I have about two dozen, steam and diesel, currently operating on the layout which is more than I need to run all the trains I operate during a typical session but it never hurts to have a few extra.