Got to thinking, again! [%-)] With the average legnth of a three-car passenger train @ 57" or more and the Lionel station being only @ 12" long, how do address the disparity on the layout?
Do you build platform extensions, leave it as it is and make the passengers walk to the front car or let the passengers just get off the cars and walk along the ground to the station?
It has been a very long time that I rode a rural train and don’t remember how it actually was. (At the present time, I ride the NYC subway and the platforms extend the length of the train.)
For my “Union Station” I use 2 K-Line/Marx Platforms for tracks 1 and 2, and 4 of these platforms for longer trains on tracks 3 and 4. The Headhouse is an American Flyer Union Station (non-talking).
For the 2 “suburban” stations on my layout, I use one of the aforementioned platforms at one stop
extending the platform with gravel, and a combination of a K-Line Station Building, and an MTH high level station platform for the other. This combination of an older station and more modern high level platform is prototypical for my area (East End of LI), as the LIRR combined the old and new at several local stations (Southampton, East Hampton, and Riverhead amoung them).
The Amtrak depot in Austin is no longer than one Superliner; so, when the Texas Eagle stops here, they put the middle of the train at the depot and let the passengers walk alongside the train. There’s a little asphalt beside the track for a “platform”.
At Clemson, SC, the conductor stops the train in front of the station, alights, loads the coach passengers, then directs the engineer to pull forward to board the sleeping car passengers. Amtrak does this at other stations including Erie, PA as well but at this time of night, I don’t remember where else it happened.
They also do this on the Capital Limited at Harper’s Ferry, WV as the platform there is very short. In Elizabethtown you have to walk through the train to the car at the platform. If you ask when you board they can usually tell you which car to sit in so you don’t have to walk the train, but not always. There are no sleepers that stop here anymore, when they did they also made two stops here. Guess there is a prototype for everything.
I have boarded many different trains at many different stations. In Chicago, you just walked the platform from the station directly to your car. In Fort Wayne’s Penn Station if was a very long platform where we just boarded at the car. When we boarded at Mt. Clair Station in Baltimore, most of the time we boarded a car in the front and walked back to the sleeper because the sleeper was inside the tunnel. At the log cabin station at Glacier National Park, we were in the last car and I believe we boarded at the car before our car due to the length of AMTRAK.
I know I have had a train stop and be told to wait, and they would pull the sleeper car forward so that we could board directly. I just can’t remember where. BTW, when we went west on Amtrak from Chicago, the train was really two trains. At Salt Lake, they split the train, one heading to San Francisco and ours heading to the Northwest. Leaving Chicago there were two dinning cars and lounge cars.
Along the Metro-North Harlem Line there are a few stations where the trains are longer than the platforms. Usually at Grand Central Station and then as they leave the station before and again as they approach the short station the Conductor will announce which cars will stop at the station, usually the front 4 cars, and the passengers walk to these cars (no walking along side the tracks).
On my railroad it depends on whether or not space will allow me to use multiple passenger stations end-to-end or not. Where it does, that’s what I do, unless it is in a real rural setting where I prefer one station.
Ken: Are you really the famous “Dashing Dan” of LIRR fame?
Actually here on the North Fork, as well as the South Fork (a/k/a The Hamptons), most of us have become “Dashing Dan’s of The Jitney”, as our LIRR service is so in-frequent.
The Hampton Jitney is a for profit private bus company, founded in 1974, it now carries the majority of riders between the East End and NYC.
Perhaps one day the LIRR will finally adjust services to reflect the 21st Century.
One bright spot with the LIRR is their Friday only express train “The Cannonball”. The train runs year round, but during “the season” it carries a drumhead on the lead and rear engines, no doubt the only regular passenger train left in the USA with this. It’s amazing that none of the o gauge companies have made a version of it.