I model in HO scale 2000 and newer. I have two trains, one intermodal and the other is mixed freight, now my mixed frieght train consists of two modern diesels up front and about 20 to 25 cars.
I wanted to know what is a good mix for a freight train. Currently I have
9 box cars (3 60’ NS auto parts, 2 ttx 60’ gunderson, 4 other miscellaneous box cars)
6 grains cars
2 coil cars
4 tanker cars ( 2 30K ethanol, 2 16k)
Is this a good mix and should I include any other kind of car.
Centerbeam bulkhead flat cars loaded with wood and flat cars loaded with just about anything make interesting loads. I’ve got a bunch loaded with Sprinter vans and John Deere farm equipment. I’m presently working on one flat car that will haul replacement wheels for rolling stock.
A mixed freight depends on the locale and industries. The train will be carrying cars to be brought to a yard where a local will bring them to the various industries. The location determines the industries, and the industries determine the cars.
For additional cars… lots of lumber moves on rail, so a few centerbeams wouldn’t be out of place. Out here on CSX, there are a bunch of trash cars, and on Pan Am, Beth Gons used to haul scrap metal.
Depends on your layout’s industries. A typical “train” (really just a cut of cars on my switching layout) would be: 1-2 boxcars or reefers for Tay Oriental Foods., a boxcar or two for Mintario paper company, a couple of covered hoppers for the WCCO flour mill, 2 hoppers for the coal company’s coal trestle, and a mix of cars for the team track (TOFC flat or two, boxcars or reefers, flatcars with loads, etc.) The first three industries are flats along the backdrop.
My freight consists are driven by what my prototype would have been doing in September, 1964.
My freight roster was deliberately intended to be a reasonably accurate representation of 1/700th of the JNR freight cars in service on 1 September, 1964.
Which cars are in which trains is determined by the waybills they are assigned - which is close to a totally random process. For example, through freights simply run from up staging to down staging and back, stopping long enough to trade out 30 percent of their cars and change from steam to motor (catenary) or vice-versa. Thus, through freights will have a variety of cars, changing each time they switch at Tomikawa. A solid train of box cars of several different classes is possible. So is a solid train of open-tops: flats and gons of two different length groups, JNR or private owner hoppers in no particular order. Once a timetable week or so, one train will pass through with a consist of new design cars: mechanical reefer, a couple of empty auto racks, JNR type container cars, some with the brand-new (in 1964) forced-lubrication roller bearing trucks designed for passenger train speeds. The story is that they are on their way from the builder to the acceptance inspection site where they will pick up their very first loads.
Looking at a reasonably typical local freight terminating at Tomikawa from Minamijima:
2 loaded box cars to be forwarded to Takami by through freight.
1 long flat car loaded with structural shapes, consigned to the double-tracking project working out of Tomikawa (company service.)
4 empty drop-side 4 wheel gons, to be interchanged to the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo.
1 loaded gasoline tanker (4 wheel) to be transloaded onto Kashimoto Forest Railway ca
I won’t get into prototype specifics, but here’s a quick summary of what traffic my freelanced New Hampshire railroad, the White River Southern Railroad hauls, and for what industry.
Boxcars for Hyce Machinery and the occasional car for interchange to a connecting shortline.
Reefers for a food company, via an interchange.
Grain hoppers for the same food company.
Airslide hoppers for the same food company.
Mill gondola for large steel pieces, via an interchange.
Gondolas; scrap metal from Kimball Scrap, and pulpwood from Delery Pulpwood & Lumber
Double-door boxcars to a farm/construction equipment dealer, via the Mascoma Transfer Facility (modern name for a team track)
Cement hoppers from LeBlanc Cement.
Open-top hoppers from Formanek Gravel Co. I hope to eventually run a solid unit train of these. For those New Englanders, think of the Boston Sand & Gravel Company near North Station and it’s trains of New Hampshire Northern (NHN) gravel hoppers.
Technically a mixed train is a train that carries both passengers and freight.
I don’t have “mixed train” consist because I don’t run a set group of cars as a train. Stopped doing that at home when I got rid of the under the Christmas tree loop and altogether when I stopped running on modules.
My trains consist of whatever cars are available and switched from the yard for the blocking of the train at the time it runs up to its tonnage. So that would be up to 8-15 cars under the current scheme and essentially any of the cars I own could be on any train.
Since a “mixed” train refers to a mixed freight/passenger train, a common term for a freight that includes a mix of different cars is “manifest.”
What cars are in that manifest depends entirely on the origin and destination yards, and the industries or interchanges and connections at each end or in between. Grain is extremely common on many roads, indeed on some praririe lines it may be the primary or only cargo carried, while on the Algoma Central there was absolutely zero grain traffic, as it was a northern Ontario shortline that served primarily forestry and iron ore traffic and finished steel from a mill in Sault Ste Marie to connections with the CN and CP.
Our club layout by contrast, has a huge variety of traffic and cargoes. Local traffic includes lots of covered hoppers of cement, tankcars of sulphuric acid, fuel oil, gasoline, diesel and chlorine, boxcars of paper and woodpulp, and LCL for the freight shed, hoppers of gravel, crushed slag (for track ballast), coal and iron ore pellets, as well as gondolas of steel products, flatcars of pulpwood and lumber and nickel ore in various forms (raw ore in 20’ ore cars, ore concentrates in covered gondolas, processed nickel matte in covered hoppers and and semi-processed concentrated nickel ore/water slurry in specialized cars).
The area represented by the club layout is also located on CP’s main transcontinental route, and everything going cross-country passes through. Therefore through traffic includes everything from lumber and telephone poles from BC and Alberta, potash and grain from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, steel from mills in Regina, Selkirk (near Winnipeg), Sault Ste Marie and Hamilton (near Toronto), paper from other Ontario and Quebec mills, livestock and frozen meat from Alberta, beer, manufactured goods, automobiles, chemicals and plastics from Ontario and Quebec, as well as intermodal, large amounts
Well, to me a mixed consists of passenger and freight…
So my mixed local (daily) is 100% prototypical (1960) and consists of a two bay covered cement hopper and a 70 foot combination baggage-passenger car. Occasionally there is a ice hatch reefer. Only during harvest season are their 10-12 grain loading boxes, but most often there are special grain trains run to handle that load. This is pulled by a single GP7.
I have one mixed train sitting there right now. It’s rural Florida and 1949. There are seven cars and the loco at the point will be either a, GP7, RS-2 or a sad looking Russian Decapod steamer. I haven’t decided yet - there’s no rush today.
This is what this train looks like as a list.
Loco
Stock - car - beef cattle inside.
35’ Watermelon car - SAL
35’ Watermelon Car - SAL
Tank Car - Gulf
40’ box car.
Old style 50’ open platform, wood passenger car - Seaboard.
HW 85’ combine - Seaboard.
This is a scheduled train running every day except the weekend with the cars changing to suit the requirements of the railroads customers on any one day.
Bruce[:)]
A manifest consist can also depend on the day of the week…Monday the consist could contain a load of John Deere tractors and loaded coil cars.Tuesday train consist doesn’t include the JD tractors or coil cars and may include loads of scrap.Wednesday the consist could include several covered hoppers of grain or soybeans.
Also after a three day holiday the consist could be shorten by several cars and contain more empties then loads.
Again nothing is cut and dry on the railroad-not even a train consist.
Also recall a manifest could run only on (say) Tuesday,Thursday and Saturday.
Another reason to consider adopting an operating scheme for your layout. My freight manifests are based on where the traffic is coming from and where it’s going. Some sessions my locals have more cars than my through trains. Elkins trains always include pulpwood, wood chips and coal, plus whatever other materials might be tagging along that day, and maybe some interchange cars from the C&O at Durbin, or the B&O at Belington. Baltimore trains will have imported goods coming from Port Covington, empty hoppers. Trains from the Reading will have westbound empties and loads from New York and New England, and Eastbound trains from Connellsville are destined from there to the northeast, or Baltimore, or south via the N&W at Hagerstown.
Once you understand what your railroad does and where it goes (and when it does it!), you can get a better understanding of what kind of equipment you need to invest in…
Lee
Several years ago one of our short line railroads, the Yreka Western’s steam locomotive was hauling a two passenger car tourist train with center beam flat cars on the end. They had just picked up the two cars loaded with sheets of plywood material at the local lumber mill to drop off for interchange in Montague, CA. It was a wonderful sight to behold.
How would the cars be placed? Would passenger cars be at the head of the consist or would freight cars be first in line?
Depends on the location and the how they did the switching. Most of the time the passenger cars were at the front end in order to receive steam from the locomotive for car heating. On some branchlines, there was only one passenger car and it was at the end to also serve as a caboose for the train crew.
Most mixed trains I’ve seen photos of had the passenger equipment at the rear. Often behind the operating caboose. These cars were typically older heavyweights heated by stoves on board, rather than steam heat from the engine.
The way I like to make up a train is to try to copy what I see in real life. Its always been the cool part of the hobby for me. In my cause I take photo’s from the 1970’s or the 1980’s of the D&RGW, and try to find models in HO that match those in the pictures. Many I can find in model form so I buy those - same with the locomotives. Being able to make up a model train that looks more or less like the freight train in the photo is very satisfying.
I have a pre-1900 combine that I occasionally add on to a freight. It theoretically is used when the regularly scheduled passenger train (the “Cannonball”) is under-booked or over-booked. That car has a stove for heat and it usually fits in on the end, so it can be left at the depot while the rest of the train moves on to the yard.
Getting back to manifests, some of them become so predictable that you can tell what train they are by the consist.
For example, along the Sunset Route here in Arizona, the West Colton-Phoenix trains will usually have long cuts of centerbeam flatcars (shorter now during the recession), cushioned box car loads of beer, refrigerator cars, cement hoppers and one or two distinctive multi-compartment tank cars that cycle between an oil distributor and the refinery. Trains coming up from Mexico through the Nogales gateway have Mexican beer in standard box cars, sulphuric acid tank cars, sometimes cement hoppers, etc.
On the other hand, up in the Chicago area on the CN/WC, I would see northbound blocks of kaolin tank cars and hoppers, along with chemicals for the Wisconsin paper industry. Southbound trains would bring back strings of kaolin empties, paper in 50’ box cars and carloads of lumber and potash from Canada.
The CBBI and BICB on the Iowa Interstate often feature long strings of ethanol tanks and corn syrup, as well as gondolas for steel and scrap service. At one time they would tack on intermodal well-cars when Maytag was still in operation and shipping appliances.
At Rochelle on the Union Pacific, you would know it was the MCBPR because of the number of tank cars carry animal by-products such as tallow from the packing industry.
The point of all this is that depending upon the area, trains will take on a familiar look after while. If you are modeling that area, what you see in real life can help you determine what rolling stock you want on your own layout.
John Timm
After working for the Norfolk Southern for nearly 10 years (and spending many years before that watching NS, CSX and the other local roads to my area), I can tell you that you can run pretty much anything you want in a mixed freight. There’s no right or wrong.
We often run mixed freights that are almost all covered hoppers and tank cars. Many other general mixed freights will be predominantly box cars (and they say the box car is dead). Some mixed freights are about as mixed as you can get, with boxcars of every type, covered hoppers of every type, lots of different tank cars, gondolas, open top hoppers with woodchips, sand, coal, ballast, aggregate, broken glass, or other similar products, coil steel cars, pulpwood racks, lumber flats, various other types of flats, automobile racks, etc. There’s no rule whatsoever for building a mixed freight.
We also often run intermodal cars (mostly stacks, but sometimes TOFC equipment) in the middle or at the end of a mixed freight. Also a lot of our “pig trains” (or intermodal trains as they’re more commonly known) often have automobile racks in them. We can run pig trains at 60mph, but mixed freights can’t exceed 50mph. If there are certain empty open top hoppers or bulkhead flats they can’t exceed 45mph.
My best advice to you if you are trying to emulate something you see lo