Record Setting HO Model Railroading

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I am a member of the Wilmington (NC) Railroad Museum’s Model Railroad Committee. We are planning an event to run an HO track the length of our city’s river-walk, a 1.1 mile long boardwalk along the Cape Fear River. We intend to enlist the help of 19 teams, each to install 300 feet of track on the morning of the event. Connect them for a total run of 5700 feet, and then operate several historic Atlantic Coast Line trains along the full length of the track. As this will be about 94 scale miles in length we would expect about a two to three hour run, including stops at stations along the way.

We have been trying to find information about other long point-to-point model railroad runs but other than the OO scale run done in Devon last year we have not found others. We would like to claim this as the longest HO run, at least in the USA. Does anyone have any information about other such point-to-point runs in HO?

2

Contact Guinness. If there is no record set yet, you can be the first.

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/member/how_to_become_a_record_breaker.aspx

3

John May from England has the record, lay 10 miles of HO track on a old rail line. Engines only made it 7 miles I think.

4

There’s a you tube video of it posted recently. I think the link came from these forums.

5

Thanks for the link to John May’s 10 miles of track on Devon, England. I have seen the full BBC video and it was the inspiration for our attempt. Ours will be with HO equipment while his was in OO scale. No difference in track gauge just the scale difference.

6

I loved that episode of John May’s show. Indeed Hornby OO track is the exact same gauge as HO, in fact the Hornby stuff they used is very much like Atlas Code 100. Good luck with your project, it would be fun to see photos and maybe even your own TV spot!!

7

Thanks for your good wishes Simon. We hope to get video documentation as we go forward. At the very least we should end up with a great number of photographs.

8

By the way [#welcome] to the site. I was wrong on the name, it is James May, I was looking for it on U Tube so I could post a link.

Cuda Ken

9

That sounds like a really fun thing to accomplish. I saw that video from the England guys as well, very interesting what problems came up, they overcame alot, mostly the weather was horrible.

Good luck, we hope you accomplish this, and please update us on your plans, and of course the event.

10

I all so think they had half of there batteries stolen and they used Hornsys (spell check) engines. 10 miles would have been a cake walk for my Y6 b! It had 400 hours on it before I had any problems, and has another 100 hours after the repair I made.

11

Good luck! Keep us posted as to how it went. It sounds really cool what you are doing! Its one of those “I wish I had thought of that!”

Chuck

12

The key reasons, why James May failed to make those 10 miles were the weather conditions, voltage drops, and gunk and debris accumulating on the rails, causing gear failures. HO locos (or OO scale locos) are not made to run outside, with all the sand and dirt sucked up into the gears!

Nevertheless, a very entertaining video!