Does anyone know what percentage of Model railroders model in traction? Last I heard, it’s was 12% thru a reader survey conducted by Model Railroader magazine - 24 years ago. Has the number increased (or decreased)?
No idea, but I’ve got subways and trolleys on my layout.
And, I wouldn’t be without them. Really, it’s not the numbers, but the enjoyment each of us gets from what we’re doing.
The Route of the Broadway LION is 100% subway. All previous passenger equipment will become a static display in “Penn Station”. Some freight cars will be made into yellow NYCT MOW units of various sorts. The rest? Who Knows?
ROAR
I have several ancient Red Ball steeple cab kits in S scale gathering dust , gotta get me some Athearn blue box switcher chassies on the cheap to power them, some re-guaging required, talk about minority modeling, S scale traction.
Dave
I don’t know, but I’d guess the number is lower today. 12% included many who had a trolley car on a primarily non-traction layout. Back in those days, brass traction models were commonly available, too. Nowadays, relatively little available on the market. In comparison to narrowgauge, there has been less interest among modelers, too.
I model a traction line. 3 40 ton Steeple Cabs. A Doodblebug that will see an change over to electric. The eventual plan is for a pair of street people movers, but am unsure of type.
While this is true to an extent, it can also be a litttle frustrating when you’re alone. You’re unlikely to meet other modelers of electric railroads when in the hobby shop or at train shows. When you need help, or want to learn more about something, NOBODY knows anything (and the more obscure it is, the less reliable the answers tend to be).
Though you can connect with many people online, after a while, you’ll start to notice the same people making the same posts of the same questions. Half the time when I google search things, I get my own forum posts as top results.
There are few people to share your modeling with that can appreciate it. I’m not saying people need to be a hardcore fan of a particular electric railroad, but it is easy to become overlooked by someone’s steam locomotive model or other “popular” item. While we do get most of our enjoyment from “the journey” of making the model, it can be a little bit of a downer if your work goes unnoticed.
I have a street car line connecting my Union Station with the Downtown area on my layout. I’m using the Bachmann Peter Witt cars because I like how they look. However, I have learned these cars have flimsy mechanisms, and I am not pleased with that. I may change to Bowser of ConCor PCC trolleys. … I plan to install overhead wires to look right, but that will be very time-consuming.
I don’t think that I model traction, even though there’s (simulated) 1500VDC catenary over the rails. Somehow, my picture of, “Traction,” doesn’t include 2-Co+Co-2 and 1-Bo+Bo-1 motors, never mind a Bo+Bo+Bo-Bo with two carbodies and boxcab Bo+Bos capable of pulling a loaded coal unit upgrade unassisted.
If you figured out that I have an electrified line-haul railway, you’re partially right. My main station is the engine change point where those motors hand off to steam (and vice versa.) Most of those newfangled diesel-hydraulics run through…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with steam, diesel-hydraulics and cat motors)
I don’t model traction, but the guys I hang out with are longtime traction modelers.
In the Philadelphia area, there are two organizations that host meets, one at Rutgers University in the fall that draws folks from New York, and another every other year in the Philadelphia region.
The second one is hosted by the East Penn Traction Club, and features lots of layouts and vendors selling traction-related items.
The guys I know are O-scale modelers, and do a fair amount of scratch building to get what they want, but I think that’s part of the attraction.
I’ve been drawn into the party, building HO traction models from various suppliers.
They are craftsman kits, but not terribly difficult to build. If you’ve built a Branchline boxcar, you can probably handle one of these kits.
Bowser makes power mechanisms that are the default standard for HO traction modelers.
Since I’ve been building these cars, I’ve researched some of the lines in the Philly area and I can see the attraction of traction 
- but the layout I’m building is too small to add even a short bit of trolley track.
If you’re on the West Coast, there appears to be a fairly substantial traction community that is a legacy of the the Pacific Electric in California.
There also seems to be a decent traction community in the Chicago area.
I’ve seen the Bowser PCCs run - and they look very smooth.
And TCS makes a specific DCC decoder that mimics the sequence of brake lights, etc. involved in a trolley stop.
KND Enterprises makes a number of traction kits in HO and O scales, mostly Philly-area models, but a few Midwestern prototypes also.
The community may be small, but there is a passionate group of modelers out there if you look.
Good luck and have fun!
Eric
There are a few new traction models out there–like Bachmann’s neat little single-truck Birney, saving trouble for those who don’t want to repower an old Ken Kidder Birney so they travel slightly slower than Mach 1, and their excellent Peter Witt model streetcar. Interurbans and electric freight are still very much a niche except for those who aren’t afraid to scratchbuild or kitbash. It’s definitely a part of the hobby that appeals most to the person who wants something a bit different–and doesn’t mind building things. Fortunately, modeling traction generally means smaller layouts, smaller consists and relatively limited motive power–it’s not well-suited to the giant basement empire.
I model a line transitioning from electric to diesel (early 1950s) called the Sacramento Northern (northern California lines always play second banana to Pacific Electric) and my layout travels backwards in time–originally it was diesel-only, recently I erected trolley poles (but not wire yet) and started running steeplecabs and the occasional streetcar or interurban “fan trip” on my mainline.
Hi everybody!
Thank you very much for your comments on Traction model railroading - much appreciated. As you all know, I was the one who posed the question about where do traction model railroaders stand versus steam and diesel model railroaders in the hobby.
The last I heard, more than 20 years ago, steam model railroading was tops on the list by popularity. Diesel ran a close second to steam, and traction was a distance third according a reader survey conducted by Model Railroader magazine. I remember being very displeased with this finding. At the time, I could not understand how traction could be so far down the list of popularity. And I still don’t understand it, today. I believe that steam and diesel are still far ahead of traction today. Judging from supplies, kits and accessories sold in model train hobby stores, their mostly geared towards steam and diesel. I am aware that you can find plenty of supplies and accessories for building traction layouts and kit bashing (for the traction modeler). But, compared to steam and diesel, the availability of traction supplies, parts and accessories are limited. I find this very disheartening.
Whenever I think of steam and diesel model railroading, I see in my head, layouts with prairies, rolling land, livestock out to pasture. I also see box cars, gondolar cars, flatbed cars, tank cars and cabooses on tracks in the middle of nowhere. All this strikes me as rather boring. And, with the exception of the Zephur and the M-10000, I find diesel equally boring. Most of the engines and rolling stock just doesn’t appeal to me. But, getting back to the subject of steam, I definitely find the locomotives and their tenders most interesting and beautiful. But that is, nothing else. Even I find it difficult to imagine how anyone couldn’t find the steam locomotive extremely fascinating. The magnificent steam locomotive thundering down the track with all it’s moving parts and white steam billowing out from it’s sides and dar
Please excuse my lousy writing. I didn’t proof read my comment before posting it.
24 years ago was 1988. At that time, many folks in their 40’s or older would have had first hand knowledge of streetcars, electric interurban lines, etc. However many of those systems shut down in the forties and fifties, so today there are fewer people who have memories of them - so, I would suspect, there are fewer people who would be interested in modelling them.
That being said, narrow-gauge railroading pretty much ended in the US (outside of museum type lines) in the sixties, yet I suspect narrow-gauge modelling is stronger than ever. In part that’s because of new products like Bachmann’s On30 line; I suspect the new high-quality streetcars out now could have a similar effect.
Plus, I wonder how many folks are modelling “new” traction systems, like light-rail lines??
CR&T’s free-standing benchwork is going down this coming year, and it is N Scale!
The plan is essentially a two-level u-shaped layout in an outer dimension footprint of apx. 5’ x 9’. N Scale is what makes it possible in the limited amount of space.
Due to the stress of traction poles for overhead catenary (for GG1), or single-wire overhead (for PCC & box motor), the base must be plywood instead of foam many today employ in layouts.
Scratchbuilding is also the traction norm (for any scale) as opposed to primarily R-T-R like it is for steam or diesel-- for the poles, overhead wire, rails in streets, and traction motive-power conversions. Still thinking about including a simple subway division, which would make it “2.5 levels” under the layout’s upper level, roughly at eye level.
I’m guessing N Scale traction is less than 1-2% of model railroaders – but – It is a big deal in Japanese model railroading – See eBay’s Plaza Japan.
This is not a matter of Steam/Diesel/Electric vs Traction. Comparing motive power at this broad level is a somewhat misleading way to analyze the situation.
It is more like "Commuter**/**Passenger operations vs Freight operations"
Most Traction operations were commuter operations. While it was true that some traction companies offered limited freight service, this was usually in the form of terminal switching.
Street cars and interurbans are thoroughly in the “commuter rail” category, lumped in with Subways, Rapid Transit lines, Electric MUs, and even locomotive hauled commuter push-pulls.
The reality is, Passenger rail modeling in general is not very popular.
This is not to say that people don’t like passenger trains, but you’ll notice very few people specifically model them. Look at any Model Railroader featured article. Very frequently, if there is a passenger train, its one or two, often short passenger trains that are the “daily round trip”. The primary focus is always Freight trains.
Indeed, it seems like more and more, Industrial short line (ISL) switching layouts are becoming more popular, especially after Lance Mindheim began showing up in publications. Ironically, these have become popular because they fit in a smaller space than a traditional layout, and model a smaller area more prototypically.
I feel these would be the same arguments for a traction layout. Indeed, i believe a compelling traction layout could probab
Yes, this is a problem on the Route of the Broadway LION, and I figured this out early on. Running the Broadway Local on my layout is every bit as boring as running it in New York City. It is called “Scraping the Wall”, that is making every local stop. And it takes 18 minutes to run the railroad from 242nd Street down to South Ferry a
Years ago I built a Marklin layout and used US prototype trolley wires for the overhead as I wanted something more in scale than the Sommerfelt or Marklin offerings.
Hanging the wire and getting the bridles to work correctly around curves took an extreme amount of patience and do - overs. I was very pleased with the result and did run pantographs off of the wire.
As for why there isn’t more traction?? Who knows?? I would say that it does entail some effort to get a trolley system up and running…
Guy
Quite frankly, these challenges are what appeals to me about modeling traction (+) CR&T’s N Scale layout footprint will keep things manageable. As to prototype, I grew up in Johnstown, PA, observing the prototype, which had the largest PCC fleet in “a smaller” USA 3rd-class city, and later trolleybus two-wire coaches into the 1960s. However, even with only 100+ USA cities with major traction operations (see Dave’s Electric Railroads), there were a number of very large Class I railroad prototypes that electrified (again see Dave’s Electric Railroads) like the Virginian, and Pennsylvania Railroad (also see North East Rails).
I’m in my 40s, and I grew up riding light rail as a teenager–I didn’t have the money for a car (preferred spending my meager income on models!) so buses and light rail were how I got around. As the revival of American electric railroading has occurred, we may see growing interest in modeling traction. Since some cities run “legacy” fleets or restored/reproduction historic cars (San Francisco, Little Rock, Tampa) the older styles of streetcars are often quite familiar to city transit riders, so modeling older styles of streetcars is less of a stretch. I have a feeling that the generation growing up today will relate more to trains than Boomers or Generation X did–kids growing up in the 1950s-80s assumed trains were going the way of the dodo, while cities are now rebuilding their transit systems and Amtrak ridership is at an all-time high. Plus, there is appeal to those with limited space, like narrow gauge–traction layouts can run on absurdly sharp curves, and tend to be smaller than steam or diesel layouts of the same scale. Trains are short (only one car for trolley layouts!) which makes a small layout seem larger; traditionally, while the standard HO layout was a 4x8, a standard “starter” trolley layout was a 2x2 loop with a passing track or carbarn!
The other factor mentioned by the OP is interesting–some folks aren’t as interested in modeling the countryside. I’m a city boy by inclination–I like the country okay, but would rather visit a city and look at gritty old buildings and industrial districts (for modeling ideas!)
My modeling reflects this–it’s an industrial belt line through a city, serving industries but also modeling residential neighborhoods where the belt line ran. Operation is mostly freight, with passenger runs in the form of “fan trips” (the prototype line was fairly accommodating to early traction fans chartering obsolete equipment for tours.) Modeling city scenery also satisfies my interest in historic architecture, and