Craig,Interesting topic and very thought provoking…
I suppose one could argue one doesn’t see a complete prototype train and would have a valid point.However,in our scaled down would a short train will look better on a small layout far better then a long train on that small layout.
Now on the other hand a A-B-B-A, 4-8-8-4 or 2 big SD70M-2s pulling say 12-15 cars looks out of place even on the prototype.
IMHO the train length should fit the layout and our locomotives should fit the train length regardless if the train is in our vision or not.
The longest freight train operating on my HO layout is the Chatsworth Hauler and has between 15 and 25 cars in its consist plus three diesel units for power. I don’t have a yard to make up trains so the Hauler sets out and picks up 4-6 cars for the two locals that do all the switching work. Once the cars are picked up by the Hauler, they become new set-outs again. I like listening to the three diesels pulling the Hauler as they do strain under pulling because most of the freight cars have older sprung trucks.
I generally run freights of between 25-30 cars on my Yuba River Sub behind big steam, but for me it looks satisfactory, because the layout is broken up with cuts, tunnels and bridges, so that the entire train is seldom visible at once.
My train length is constrained by the number of cars that can fit on my rail ferry the Annebelle II (the Annie Deuce for short) - 12 50 foot cars. Since all traffic enters and leaves the layout via the Annie Deuce, it made figuring out the train length rather easy.
In comparison, the prototype Seattle and North Coast (and earlier the Milwaukee Road) service operated with two 15 car rail barges and their trains ran around 30 cars.
There are a billion variables and some fudging is almost certainly necessary but perhaps a train length that “fills the eye” from the farthest point in the room might be a decent starting point when designing a layout.
Hint! Everything is relative. Depending on what you have up front, how “long” a train is appropriate? 12-15 cars look good with a pair of geeps but woeful with four F units. Do you want the limit to be your staging tracks or A/D tracks, or view blocks. If in doubt take the time to do a mockup or visit a few clubs. The planning stage is the most important time you can spend to make a successful layout. jc5729 John Colley, Port Townsend, WA
You’re missing the point. The OP isn’t saying that a 15 car train is a car-for-car duplicate of a typical mainline freight. The OP is saying that, on his layout, a train of that length succeeds in filling the scene in the same way as a real train fills its surroundings, and so looks like a long train, even if it isn’t.
The proper impression is made, at a savings of 75% of the cost and space. Money may not be a limit for a few people, but space always is. After all, even if you have a 40 x 50 foot room, that’s only 350 HO scale acres.
Joe Fugate has a very in depth discussion of this in his layout design web clinic. I believe that it is available on his Siskiou Line website.
Train length is key to the design of an operating layout. I started with my basic train length (10 cars) and designed/built the layout to operate with this factor driving most of the decisions about passsing sidings etc. A 10 car train will be around 6 feet long in HO, 25 car trains are close to 14 feet depending on the loco.
As for the issue of small trains being unrealistic, two words: Selective compression. You can’t fit it all anyway. Most of us have small spaces. Mine is 13’ x 22’. I have put a double deck in this space with a 160’ mainline run. Long trains won’t fit in and look good with the ops plan I wanted. So I am happy to compress the lentgh to get better operation and look.
If you want to run long trains and have operations you will need space and ingenuity to make it happen. See Joe F.s trackplan. Also google Ric Fortin’s railroad for an example of another operations based HO layout running long trains.
One exception to this on my layout: I do run cab forwards with reefer blocks around the lower deck, these are about 25 cars long and the train is longer than peninsula in the center of the room. I do also have a 35’ long siding in staging. Not sure I would ever run a train that long (70 cars), but it is there. Monster truck pulls anyone??
I think it also depends on the era. Contemporary freight cars are much longer than the 36 footers of a hundred years ago. Also, those old slide-valve steam engines could only handle about a dozen cars, tops. For me, on my 1930-something layout, I feel that 5 to 10 car trains are just fine.
Like Chuck, I model a Japanese prototype where short trains were the norm, so I’ve simply copied what they ran, working by observation and reference to photos and documents. Again, they were often made up of little four-wheelers, soemtimes no more than one or two vehicles swinging on the back of an interurban car.
But I think your concept is good for modelling a railroad that ran big trains. When I modelled a US railroad, I tended to run trains that were just a bit longer than the longest scene they’d run through, typically 18 to 20 cars. Like you I found that this gave the impression of a longer train, since it was never visible in it’s entirety.
Several of us seem to be in agreement that there is little point to having trains much longer than the eye can take in as subtended by the arc of useful vision from any one vantage point, and this includes artefacts on the layout that might restrict that subtended angle of vision…such as the distance between to occluding hills or substantial structures, or even two tunnels.
I’ve got a way around that. Staging becomes shelves and a portable rerailer. Poof! endless track!
BTW, Awesome shots. Love the climb uphill.
The Naptown rule is the length of passing sidings. About 15 cars. I tend to follow the “what looks right length.” The switching will also tend to hang around the 15 xcar mark, but Dad and I both like the long unit drags. And for Half Moon, which sits on aain out of Chicago, long through trains may be norm. It comes down to what your modeling, and what space you have. Smaller room will make trains smaller, as will shortlines in the middle of knowwhere. If you’ve got a larger area and are modelling Big Boys/etc, ABBA sets, or modern Dash 9 pairs or trios that look out of place with a train that isn’t as long as they are,
Also, this comes form the guy lookign forward to modelling a full length Circus Train. only 56 cars.
near the end of its life (1949) the Virginia & Truckee was operating with train length running north out of Carson City of 6 cars: mixed loads and empties, freight and passenger. They were running with 3 1905 era ten wheelers and a 1920s consolidation. I’m sure that when they got to Reno they would meet an Espee cab forward AC. my point is that what yer modeling is what determines appropriate and realistic train length
I have a fairly large layout which influences my perspective on this issue. I don’t always look at my trains from the perpendicular. I like to see them coming and going so in these cases I can see the whole length of the train unless it is fairly long. My main yard was designed to hold about a 30+ car train (40 footers) on the arrival departure track. I rarely run them that long for several reasons. A train that length will dwarf the layout and reach from one town to the next which destroys any illusion of actually going somewhere. Derailments are also more frequent with the really long trains as it creates more stress on the curves. I find 20-25 car trains to be the optimum length in terms of operating reliability and also creating the sense of longer train that is actually going somewhere.
Well, I put up a loop of Kato Unitrack with 31 inch radius in my train room which takes about roughly 7 by something feet of space… and found that my analog test unit would pull 19 boxcars and a caboose without overwhelming the loop.
I hate math but I think to recall that long of a train took about… 60% of the total loop. It has been a while since I ran it to remember precisely.
90 degrees of 31 inch curvature will hold approx 8 40 foot boxcars. So when you think in that way tis easier to reconcile train lengh versus space.
Dont be surprised when that ABBA shows up with one HD Flatcar with many axles and a caboose.
In addition to the maximum visual train length (how much can you see at the normal distance from the layout), I have a couple of other rules of thumb I use in layout design.
The first comes from Iain Rice in MRP 2003: for a shelf layout, maximum train length should be between 1/4 and 1/3 the length of the shelf.
The next is mine based on observation of 4x8 and similar island style layouts - maximum train length on these layouts should be equal to or less than the distance between the turnback curves. This length allows fitting of a train length passing siding on the sides, or on the ends, and prevents the train from being on both straight sides of the layout at the same time.
I use a similar rule for around-the-room-walls layout. Maximum train length should be less than the distance between the corner curves on the short wall. Anything more overwhelms the layout, IMHO.
A Norfolk Southern local trundles through town here every day. Most of the time, a high hood GP38 is the power, and its pulling 10-20 cars, usually some coil steel cars, pellet hoppers, and half a dozen 60 (sometimes 86’) boxcars. The last few days its had a Dash 9 as the power (the usual Geep may be down for fixin’)
A very interesting train in real life, and would look good on a layout. The same train with 3 Dash 9s as power and 2 pushers would look out of place. I model N scale steam, and a “huge coal drag” of 40-50 cars looks incredible…keep in mind, these are small 32 foot hoppers and N scale to boot, so the whole thing is only about 10 feet long. Match the train to the power and its surroundings. My coal drags have a mallet (2-8-8-2s atm, working on more prototypical ones) and another pushing, and looks good. The same engines working 15 boxcars would just look wrong.