How long are your intermodal trains in HO scale?
I have two. One is double-stack containers and the other one is trailers of spine cars. The container train is four, five unit well cars long or 20 cars long and the trailer one is .
So far I’ve collected enough to build a 1988-1991 HO Rio Grande intermodal train as follows:
2 five-car red Sea Land Twin Stack sets (A-Line/Intermountain)
1 five-car yellow Southern Pacific TT Twin Stack set (A-Line/Intermountain)
3 five-car yellow Gunderson sets (Walthers, two are TT, one is TTX)
2 five-car MAXI Stack sets (one yellow TT and one red SP)
Thats 40 units and the D&RGW usually didn’t have a lot more than that in a train. They would have been followed by flat cars with trailers.
I have a couple spine car sets too, but those were typically used in TOFC/COFC trains and not double stacks although not exclusively. One set is the Walthers 5-car spine set in TTX and the other is Athearns based on Santa Fe’s Impac cars and painted for Trailer Train. Don’t forget the single spine cars called Front Runners.
I’m modeling an era before my prototype area saw double-stacks or spine cars. A pig train gets about a dozen 85’ and/or 89’ flats to roughly equal the maximum train length of 20-21 50’ cars.
Which were probably handed over to the D&RGW in Salt Lake City. =P. My guess is the pig trains you are modeling are identical to pig trains I am modeling. Depending on pre-1982 or post 1982/83 when 45’ vans were approved for TOFC service. There would mostly 89’ flush deck and channel side flats like those made by Walthers, Atlas, and now Athearn!
I model 1954, in the earliest days of Piggy Back, mostly 54’ flats with one 35’ trailer or two 26’ trailers. I have a total of about 80 TOFC flat cars. Some of the others are 40’ cars with 35’ trailers. I do have about 18 of those “brand new” 75’ cars from Beth Steel that carry two 35’ trailers.
Typical trains are 35-40 cars. Some trains are TOFC express, that is all TOFC, but many times TOFC service is just run at the head end of a hot shot freight, 6-8 Piggy Back flats in a train of 35-40 cars.
And many of the trains are pulled by steam - double headed Mountains or Mikados.
Sheldon
6 cars, give or take. On occasion. their may be one 6 unit TripleCrown car. These are small ops trailers from regional companies, who have their cars added en-route to a Chessie Intermodal or tacked onto the back of an Amtrak train with ExpressTrak qualifications.
I don’t run any intermodal trains but I do have around a dozen container cars I mix in with what ever I run at train shows once in awhile.
anywhere from one car to 30 in a train
Yup, we’re modeling similar stuff. Trains are a mix of 89’ flush deck cars and channel sides, plus some surviving 85’ cars like the TTX F85B and F85F classes. I’ll have at least one of the BLMA F89J cars in original paint as soon as those are released too.
By 1982, a lot of WP traffic was being handed over to UP at the SLC gateway as well, so a typical pig train is likely to have UP SD40-2s and/or C30-7s, plus a UP pool caboose.
My intermodal train right now is one 5 car set of Maxi I well cars doubled stacked or single and two 60 ft flat cars with containers and trailers. Hey, no one said it had to be prototypical! [:P]
Who makes the 75 foot cars? I am looking to acquire some in the future and my new layout’s era will be 1959. I would like to find some of the early trailer train cars that Pennsylvania railroad pioneered. Right at this moment I don’t remember if they were 75 or 85 feet long in 1957.
thanks
The container portion of my once-a-week `special service’ train consists of four cars, three (of 2 different designs) carrying five standard containers and one carrying four containers and a guard’s cabin as big as a standard four wheel brake van. They run at the rear of a consist which also includes a couple of double-deck auto racks, a high speed refrigerator car and a long box-brake.
The standard' containers are standard JNR containers, each about 4.5 meters long. International container service hadn't reached backwoods’ Japan in September, 1964.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)