Most of the trains we see today are so long it’s easy to lose count, for me, it’s easier to forget how long the average trains were back in the 50’, 70’s. I’m asking about train length in general but even more specifically how long were those that carried mostly one commodity, coal, grain etc.? What period did they reach the 90-100+ length? The length of my sidings, yards etc is why I’m asking.
I’m sure that many of you were railfans back then, (wish I’d paid more attention).
John
Well, it varies off of which railroad, was it the main traffic, is it a branch line or short line, et certerae. For a mainline, maybe 40 some cars for the 50s, 50-60 for the 60s, and perhaps 80-90 for the 70s and onwards. Nowadays, its about 100+
John,
Many roads ran long freights of 100 or so from at least the 40’s on. Depending on which road you’re interested in, search the histories and I’m sure you’ll find that information. The New Haven for instance ran 100 car freight trains on its’ Maybrook line as well as the Shoreline route until traffic dropped off in the 50’s. At the same time, there were shorter consists for fast service and local freights with fewer cars on the branch lines. There is usually a way to run as you wish and be close to the prototype. J.R.
Well, the IRT subway trains that were what I got to see the most were 8 - 10 cars long…
The ‘trains’ on car floats were pretty short, too - not to mention the lack of locomotives…
A patrol of Boy Scouts once counted the cars of a passing Erie freight - 140 cars including caboose, behind a quartet of F units. (I remember that because the Scoutmaster and I came up with the same number.) That was the ONLY freight we saw during a 2-week summer camp. We had to take a five mile hike to reach the overlook.
By the time I could indulge in serious railfanning I was looking at black freight cars with white ‘lettering,’ most of it done in kanji. (And now you know why I model the prototype I follow.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
John,
How big is a dog? The length of trains can vary. Back in the late 60’s, I worked for the CB&Q. The hot road trains were usually around 5,000-6,000 tons. 70-75 cars was typical on manifest trains, but 100 car trains were not uncommon. The neighboring Milw Road trains many times were over 100 cars. The CGW left St Paul with really long ‘mortgage lifters’ headed for Iowa - 6 engines and 100-150 cars at times.
Single commodity unit trains were rare. I once worked a 100 car ‘potash’ train that came out of Canada via the GN, and was routed to Chicago. The big unit coal trains that ran from the mine to the power plant really did not start until the early 70’s on the BN(at least in my area). On single track lines, you need to have several long sidings to handle meets - and many times the traffic was going down in the 60’s on secondary lines. Many times meets were handled at crew change points where a big train could be yarded.
A 90-100 car HO train is a real monster to handle. Remember, our models have no air brake system! A club I belonged to back in the 70’s had sidings that could handle 25 car trains(3 engines/25 50’ cars/caboose) and we found that train handling on the 2% grades was about right. We did run several 100+ car trains at times, but pulled couplers many times were the result.
Jim
Early 1900’s.
What you are really asking is train length. 100 30 ft wooden hoppers is very different from 100 65 ft covered hoppers.
No matter when it was you don’t have room for a full size train so don’t worry about it. Even a really short 2500 ft train will be 30+ ft long in HO scale. A 1940’s RDG timetable showed sidings about 125 cars long on primary routes and about 50-60 cars long on secondary routes. Those are in 44 ft cars so that’s about 5500 ft on primary routes and 2400 ft on secondary routes. In HO scale that would be 63 ft and 27 ft respectively.
I have spent many days at the Folkston funnel in Southeast Georgia watching trains go by. Some of the unit trains like coal for power plants and the tropicana juice train are well over 100 cars. Also the intermodal double stacks are usually long. About half of the freight traffic is mixed boxcars, tank cars and hoppers and they seem to be in the 50-60 car length.
C&O ran 12000-15000 ton coal trains, back when the average car was 50 ton cap. At 20t per car and even a conservative (the mines loved to load em to the max) 60 tons per load, or 80 per car, thats 150 to almost 200 cars, with one H-7 or H-8 up front, and another pushing.
DM&IR ran similarly heavy trains of ore, though their line descended from the mines to the docks, with one big M3 or M4.
On the flipside, B&O was limited to only 4500 tons, or 55 cars or so, on its West End, and that was with 3 big mallets (one up front, two shoving) due to their insane curves and grades.
All of this is late 1940s, by the way. Id say length depends on what they need to move and if they can move it, and not the era.
Generally it was governed by the grades. The N&W used to run 2,000 ton trains using 6 2-8-0 consolidations up Elkhorn Grade in WV. At Bluefield they would fill these trains out for the down river run to the ports. In 1940’s these averaged 13,000 tons but by the 1950’s they were up to 200 cars and 18,000 tons. In the late 1960’s they ran a 500-car train out of Iaeger to Portmouth, OH just to prove they could. The Virginian on the other hand was limited to the siding capacity on their single track main to about 170 cars. They made up for this by developing bigger cars until they had 9,000+ ton trains running east.
The L&N played with remote midtrain helpers in the 1970 and tried to run 200-car (70 ton cars) trains between the mine run yard at Dent north to their big yard across the river from Cincinasty. This went on for months until broken knuckles got the best of the long trains. They standardized on 60-car unit trains that had to run through the switchback out of Loyall and 72-car unit trains on movements that went on the KY and KD mains.
They played with different train lengths into the CSX era and were typically running 90 cars with four SD40-2 or C30-7s for power. With the new GE’s in the 1990’s, these went to 95-cars and today most are still in the 95 to 105 range with two AC’s on point. It’s really common to see 190-car double mty trains on CSX in the coalfields today with four AC’s and a single crew.
These vary on the old C&O where they were like the N&W on a water level route. Mine runs were from 40-80 into Russell and then filled out to max tonnage for the ride downhill to Clifton and beyond.
I grew up alongside SP’s Donner Pass mainline during the late steam/early diesel era, and about the only single-commodity freights I can remember were their famous eastbound refrigerator blocks of California produce during the summer and early fall. I remember counting a couple, and they were between 50-60 cars in length, with an AC Cab-forward as road loco, another AC cut in the middle and sometimes yet another AC ahead of the caboose, to deal with the stiff eastbound grades over the Sierra Nevada.
This would have been during the 'forties and ‘fifties, but most Sierra mountain’regular’ freights, either east or west-bound tended to be between 40-70 cars in length. This was, I believe, partially due to the stiff grades both east and westbound to conquer the summit (westbound grade was shorter, but about 1.9% from Truckee to the Summit at Norden, and the much longer eastbound grade from Roseville to Norden was anywhere from 2.2 to almost 2.5% in spots). And since Donner Pass was double-tracked, they were very frequent–sometimes well over 40 trains per day (which is a pretty hefty amount of trains out here in the west during that period). The motive power assigned out or Roseville would be pretty contingent on the weight of the train (with often a 2-8-0 cut in as a front helper between Colfax and the summit at Norden).
On my own HO Yuba River Sub, which is set in the same general Era–1940’s-'50’s, my heaviest freights tend to run between 20-30 cars, usually with end-of-train helpers, depending on the motive power pulling at the head end. However, the trains tend to look longer because of scenery placement–cuts, fills, tunnels and bridges.
So a lot of times–especially in the time period I’m talking about–the length of the train would depend primarily on the terrain, motive power and amount of parallel trackage on any given division.
go to the DOT website and look at the icc accident reports. they are in year order starting around 1911. pick the railroad you are interested in and most of the reports give the number of cars in the train. it will also give you the location where the train was operating.
grizlump
John,The C&O and N&W ran 200 plus car coal trains in the 50s-70s…PRR ran 100 or more car reefer trains.PRR also ran 100 car TTX trains.Most general freights was over 100 cars.
I don’t recall seeing any solid grain trains in the 50s or 60s.
I remember as a kid during WW II we would watch the long trains and started to count cars and always quit from boredom before the caboose went by
Back in the '50’s SP often ran 110-120 car trains and did not hesitate to use mid-train and/or tail helpers if the grades warrented it. John
Train: A locomotive (or locomotives) with or without cars, showing markers. Peter Josserand, Rights of trains.
How long trains were then and are now is determined by the circumstances. Within a very short span of time a half-century ago:
Norfolk and Western ran an experimental 500 car train. They routinely ran close to 200 hoppers.
Trains of 150 or more cars were common on multi-track Eastern/Midwestern mains.
A number of railroads lengthened passing sidings to allow longer trains.
During the grain rush minor country lines in wheat country generated LONG trains.
A foreign railroad actually managed to move a 1000 ton train over a heavily-graded line - with triple-headed 2-8-2s.
A four car EMU train had to have two humongous C-C ‘brake motors’ to descend a 6.8% grade safely. The same two motors could handle about 200 tons upgrade.
Those same minor grain branches might see a Geep, two cars and a caboose once or twice a week.
Piggybacks were IN, but containerized intermodal was just becoming a dust cloud on the horizon.
I photographed a train consisting of a locomotive, box car, empty gon and two decrepit coaches. The more usual train on that schedule was a three car DMU set.
At least one branch was served by a single four wheel rail bus, one round trip daily except Sunday. If necessary, it could tow a (4 wheel) box car.
Railroads run whatever it takes to move their traffic. On a heavily-used Class I that means long trains with lots of motive power. On light and ma
When I lived in El Paso Texas in 1969 it wasn’t unusual to see trains of 80 - 120 cars. Being that I was a hopelessly infected train nut even then I was an avid car counter and made it my business to count 'em up as the trains passed.
To do it in a double garage, you need to model in Z scale.
Chuck
Chuck,I seen 150 car trains on N Track modular layouts at train shows and those layouts wasn’t that large…
Note the sentence BEFORE the one you extracted. To believably run 150 car trains as a regular part of operation you need:
Anything less fails my version of the believability test.
My HOj 4-wheel freight cars are about as long as N scale 50 footers. I can believably run 20 car trains - as did my prototype. If I stuck 150 of them end to end the doubleheaded catenary motors would be crossing the Nishikawa just about the time that the pushers (a C12 class 2-6-2 and a couple of DD13 diesel-hydraulics) were clearing the down end of Haruyama. The train would extend clear through my engine change/division point (Tomikawa), be running over 800+ degrees of curvature and fill the entire visible length of my JNR main. The only thing I could do in my double garage that would be less believable would involve modeling a dogfight between a F-22 Raptor and a Sopwith Camel in the skies above the Upper Tomikawa Valley.
Most of the N-Trak display layouts I have seen at shows had at least 40 feet of tangent track someplace. My longest tangent is about 15 feet, and it uses the full width of the garage door.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
When I was in Jr. High, the RR tracks ran right behind the school, and from certain classrooms you could see the tracks. Anytime a train went by, I would be distracted to counting the cars to see which train was the longest for the day. I don’t remember the exact counts of then, but some were quite long. Naturally, whatever subject matter the teacher was teaching would temporarily get lost on me.
As for what length I run on my layout, I have a very small layout so I don’t run very long trains. I run what I feel looks apropriate for my layout’s size, aobut 5-6 cars. I don’t want the engine cuppling up with the caboose or last car {with an imaginary FRED on it} on it’s way around!!!
Sounds as if your a busy young man.
Thanks for our input.