Is there a general rule of thumb for how many engines a RR should run? The question comes from running into a layout called the Chicago, Milwaukee & North Western which I thought was a pretty cool sounded railroad name. I know alot of people out there freelance and I lean towards that. I don’t plan to, or have room to, model an entire RR, even if it was a small 10 mile shortline, but I still like all aspects of it. I still like making up my own RR histories and making up rosters. I do enjoy the big RR’s, but when it comes to my own interests the smaller shortlines and regionals with only a few hundred miles of track and set in modern times (70’s up) really take my breath away.
It really depends on three things: 1) the size of your layout, 2) what you are modeling, and 3) what you’re trying to accomplish with your layout.
I model a specific RR (New York Central, in the 40s) with a fueling facility and I like to have a variety of engines. At present I have the following NYC locomotives in my roster:
(3) 2-8-2 Mikes - (2) Trix, (1) BLI
(1) 4-8-2 Mohawk
(1) 0-8-0 switcher
(1) F3
(1) S-1
(1) VO-660
I also have the following either on the way or pre-ordered:
(1) 4-8-4 Niagara - Awaiting imminent delivery
(1) 4-6-4 Dreyfuss Hudson - Hopefully still Dec '09
(1) HH600 switcher - Apr '10
It’s a nice variety of locomotives without it being overwhelming on my modest 4 x 8 layout.
Although I model the Southern Pacific diesel era in the 1960s, I have a medium layout to run my equipment on. Always think I have enough diesels until some new SP diesel comes out, then I have to have one, or maybe two. Its kind of nice to change out the power on trains so as not to look at the same old model all the time. Being as I don’t have engine service facilities, extra diesels are kept off the layout.
With the exception of the MT4, all others are built from scratch or a product of extensive kitbashing, a modest roster permits more time and resources to be devoted to other concerns, yes i have a plan of attack on aquiring that TW3!
When one models a “one train a day” prototype, how much power does one require? My operations do not require extensive locomotive facalities, or passenger operations beyond the occasional mixed train.
You can have any number of any railroad’s engine types, even to the extent of keeping many in their boxes on shelves or in bins. You’d be surprised how many of us actually do that!!!
The closer you get to actually modelling a setting of a particular railway, or say a town served by one and a short line or two, the more restricted you would necessarily be for the sake of realism. If you have documentary evidence that only some Mountain 4-8-2 engines went through on the main, plus some Mikado 2-8-2’s and a fast Pacific 4-6-2 pulling commuter or passenger trains, that is what you should limit yourself to. Whatever the short lines drove, same thing.
Fact is that most of us can’t limit ourselves that way. We want all that we fancy, and we go to great lengths, including deception and subterfuge, to get what we want…including storing a lot of it in the dark.
Ok I don’t think I wasn’t clear enough. I wasn’t really talking about modeling, it was more of a prototypical question. Like say sticking with the Chicago, Milwaukee & North Western concept (which I started thinking too much about and already came up with a paint scheme) ran North from Chicago to Milwaukee, then ran north west from Milwaukee to La Crosse and finally ending in Minneapolis/St. Paul if it was a real RR how many engines would it have.
I’m not to worried about how many engines I should have for my model RR roster. You could have a basic 4x8 layout and have a hundred engines, or could have a basement sized layout and only run 10. I’m more like the first, small layout lots of engines, but that was before I knew things like some railroads had engines that did certain runs only so there wasn’t alot of variety (like my original thinking) for a line. Like late MILW power for instance when in the 70’s they pretty much left all their Alco RSC’s in La Crosse. I do realize that say with the above hypothetical scenario if I had a mid sized layout that modeled the…La Crosse to twin cities line I may only need say 7 engines split between 4 daily through freights, say another 3 engines for locals, and say another 2 engines for the yard. I guess it was more of a question that would help in all the other aspects of my interests, like in my OP when I said I enjoy making up histories and rosters for RR’s. It’s really something doesn’t have to be done to enjoy model RRing, it’s just another aspect of it all that I enjoy. I also think I just made it more confusing [%-)][(-D]
I interpret this as: “for a given prototype shortline, how many locomotives will they typically own to support their traffic levels”.
I’m not sure there’s a hard-and-fast rule, as railroads will have some units active, some inactive, and some hulks sitting on a deadline for spare parts. They may also lease power occasionally for times when traffic is up and they don’t want to buy anything new.
Maybe what you could do is research a protype that has about the traffic level/range/operations you want to model, and see what they’ve got. www.rrpicturearchives.net can be a good starting point for this, as you can view locomotive photos by railroad. You’re not guaranteed to see a railroad’s complete roster, however, as not all of them may have been photographed and submitted there.
How big a roster? It really depends on what you are trying to model.
If you are modeling a three round trips a week branchline (or independent shortline) you can get away with two locomotives (or three road switchers if you run them back-to-back.) OTOH, you might want to model a terminal railroad’s main locomotive service area (such as the one featured in MR - which had a second turntable in its hidden staging to access a fan of layover tracks.) In that case, a roster numbering in the dozens and belonging to every railroad serving the place isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.
My own railroad(s) are a government monopoly with an incredibly dense (by US standards) schedule and a private railway that has to contend with a route more suitable to mountain goats than to trains. To add to the fun, my main modeling focus is an engine change point where catenary motors are swapped out for coal burners. (Sometimes those newfangled diesel-hydraulics run through, sometimes they don’t.) As a direct result, I have a LOT of locomotives - most of which will be on the head ends of trains in hidden staging (or in storage cassettes off the layout) at any given time. Most of them don’t even have a readable road name - you don’t have to tell people who you are if you’re the only game in town.
THATS IT!!! That right there odave is pretty much what I was trying to ask, although I have to admit I wasn’t really picturing the Chicago, Milwaukee & North Western idea as a shortline. More of a regional. As for the paint scheme idea I’m starting to second guess. Milwaukee style scheme but instead of the black/orange more like MILW black/ CNW yellow, and of course a green cab. I usually meander over to railpictures.net when looking for prototype photogs, but advice taken. Now I just need a list of shortline and regionals and their mileage [(-D] I think the Chicago-Milwaukee-La Crosse-(or Eua Claire as I realized)-Twin Cities seems like a decent line, although I’m a bit clueless as to traffic. I like all diesels but for some reason my favorite model RR’s seem to be set in the 70-80’s time frame, seems the EMD -2 and GE Dash 7 era’s always grab my attention most. But I also have the problem of thinking “bigger is better”. I.e. why choose a 3000hp SD40 when you could have a 3500hp SD50. My mind set keeps going to that hp figure so I need to reduce the lack of proper information like tractive effort and appropriate tractive effort use (just WHEN an SD40 would be used over an SD50). I need to get some track up soon so I can mess around with my N stuff while I formulate all these things.
I wrote the above right after Selector’s post, so now I’ll backtrack and try to look at the prototype angle.
A 1:1 scale railroad serving the route you have described would have as many locomotives as it needed to handle the traffic. If it was a high-capacity freight route, it might have rostered a couple of hundred drag and fast freight locomotives (obviously different in steam, a matter of gearing with diesels.) If it was a passenger raceway, the number of fast passenger locomotives would depend on the density of the passenger schedule. If it had commuter service out of Chicago it would have needed a couple of dozen locos specifically suited to that service - fast acceleration, but not extremely high speed.
Let’s look at one specific Class 1 of similar length, but of remarkably different characteristics. The N&W just before it bought its first diesel had about three hundred locomotives in operation. 43 of them were fast freight haulers, 15 were express passenger locos, another dozen or so handled secondary-route passenger service, there were 45 dedicated switchers (0-8-0) and about 100 BIG drag freight and helper locos. The rest were smaller Mallets and a scattering of other, older types that spent their time serving branch lines and making mine runs. Others, needed for seasonal traffic surges, were stored serviceable.
Your hypothetical route wouldn’t have much use for articulateds, and most of your branch lines would be more seasonal (think wheat rush.) That would cause you to maintain a pool of older power, which would spend months stored serviceable and only a few weeks a year in operation.
Bottom line - the size of the roster is determined by the amount and nature of the traffic. A busy railroad would have a LOT of locomotives, while one on the verge of bankruptcy might be struggling along with an inadequate number of well-worn
I wasn’t too impressed with the actual layout MR did, just the name. I guess it kind of stuck because back where I grew up is currently served by WSOR which bought the track rights from Milwaukee Road when they went bankrupt, and the very first trains to run in the area around the turn of the last centruy were C&NW owned.
There two RR’s marked for Princenton, but there was also one Berlin one but that may be the Princeton & North Western. 2 and 2 together does make 4. There’s also a interesting little tid bit on the second one below, just above the second circled RR.
I also had the quick thought that BN/BNSF has trackage around the Eua Claire/La Crosse area, and I heard of unit trains going to Chicago area to load grain onto ships so I’m almost thinking it could be like a bridge line between the two area’s, as if the CMNW is a bridge line. Like BN realized a cost benefit of a shorter track route or something. And of course I could also add my own elevators that would be served by CMNW. IIRC there are one or two BNSF served elevators that can handle present day shuttle trains right in the area where I could have the mythical and hypothetical CMNW. I also read somewhere that the typical (possibly BN) unit grain train of the late 70’s mid 80’s was only 26 cars, which would be easily represented in N scale in the space I have. The only real problametic part would be making sure I have enough modeled storage capacity to handle a 26 car cut of gr
My freelance/protolance/whateverlance RR is currently a granger route. I basically found through my own research of the area that I’m modelling that there was a fair number—around 15-25, depending on season. The issue I had was not so much motive----ha! I’ve got over 100 now[swg]–as it seems to be now more of a rolling stock one.
The fiscal situation in this scenario is that of a moderately successful route, bought out of near abandonment by CP. And since CP no longer has control of it–due to a huge buying binge through various stakeholders–has seen a huge increase in passenger/cargo traffic—hence more business. My roster also contains some steam engines owned by the local Williston museum owner/eccentric Fred ‘How’dhedodat?’ Thompson that are used for excursions and a whole slew of miscellaneous pieces that are trotted out for running around in----that on top of our passenger services.
from a prototype standpoint i would say at the risk of soundiing like a smart alec-no more than needed.
of course, that can be confusing since back in the early days of the PC we used to run trains out of E. St. Louis with 5 units on occasion because it was a given that 2 or 3 of them would crap out before Indianapolis.
My rule of thumb when it comes to size of locomotives & rolling stock rosters is to wait until the wife says I have too much, then continue buying more.
After determining how many are needed for the day’s traffic, add in some for being in the shop, some for seasonal traffic, and some that aren’t used, but aren’t scrapped yet.
On the model railroad about one per turnout is a good start. When you stop laying track, increase this to two per turnout. Be sure to include at least one of each wheel arrangement. Slip switches count double. [:D]
Remember what Linus said - He who has the most sincere layout will be visited by the Old Yardmaster.
My freelanced shortline is about 75 miles long and runs between two and four road freight pairs (turns that run to one place, swap cars out, and head back - two trains but only needing one engine set and crew), one local, and one yard job. I run with a roster of one GP7 and three GP18s. The GP7 handles the Lebanon, NH, yard job, and the three GP18s take cars of the local and through freights.
They will, that is, once I get two more GP18s into service…right now I’ve just got one and the GP7, my soon-to-be-surplus GP30 handles a reduced schedule on the though freights.
Besides modeling CN, CP, and a few other roads, I created my own short line railway. The locos are ex-PRR units still in their Brunswick Green paint scheme. The roster is as follows:
First, consider your traffic. If you are hauling coal or other heavy tonnage on a main line with heavy grades, you’ll need some six axle high horsepower stuff.
If you’re pulling loads from tight industrial areas or down steep mountain branches, you’ll need some short frame 4 axle stuff, like switchers.
I model the WM, which had a pretty diverse roster of diesels, with several specialties to cover. It’s also a reasonably sized regional, about 200 miles of track in three states and a total roster you can easily get your head around. But it covered everything from a busy port in Baltimore to sleepy coal branches in West Virginia, plus a fast-freight bridge route.
I also have a lot of interchange traffic, so my fleet includes power from the N&W, Reading, and B&O, and a bit of Penn Central.
