I was wondering what is your average length for your freight trains? I personally like to run about twelve cars long since I currently don’t have a layout. I’ve heard some people at train shows say they want to run prototypical scaled mile-long trains. That’s well over 700 feet long! in HO scale. To me, a large layout should have trains at least 40 cars long.
Thanks.
Usually between 70-90 cars. But if it’s a 89’ Enclosed Auto rack it’s about 60. I run big trains with lots of muscle up front.
Mike
I freelance a shortline with 18T to 22T shays as motive power. My trains are usually 4 cars or less.
My Yuba River Sub is a relatively generous (24’x24’) HO garage layout, but I usually keep my mainline freights to about 25 or 30 cars. I could run longer, but with the scenery ‘breaks’ I have (tunnels, cuts, bridges, etc.) the trains actually look longer.
Works for me.
Tom [:)]
For iron ore trains, I found 24 cars (I operate them in ‘mini-quad’ groups of four) to be about the minimum that seemed even remotely realistic. 32 or more looks much better. Beyond that it gets hard for yard tracks and staging. For general freight, right now my switching layout (1st phase of a new larger layout) uses 8 cars at a time, on the old layout I could run one freight of about 12-14 cars or so, but I found I liked it better to run two separate trains of 6-8 cars each.
BTW I believe a scale-mile long train in HO would be 60’, not 700+.
12 cars maximum. 4 or 5 look best on my 11x7 shelf layout.
This begs the question, if you don’t have a layout how can you run any cars at all?
Why do you like to run trains twelve cars long when you think trains should be at least 40 cars long? I wouldn’t think a non-existing layout restricts the preferred number of cars in a train.
Mark
Good point. I wasn’t thinking clearly when I posted the original question.[zzz] I don’t have the space for a permanent layout or enough room to run a 40 car HO train in my living room. I need a bigger place.
That must be nice to run such long trains. If you are modeling HO, how big is your layout?
My mistake. I guess I figured the calculation wrong. I took 5,280 feet X 12 inches to get 63,360 inches. I then took that divided by 87 to a ballpark figure of 700 feet roughly.
I figured out to take 5,280 feet divided by 87 to get 60. Thanks for the correction.[bow]
I prefer to run short trains. If I’m running road engines I usually run two locos, four cars and a caboose on my very small HO layout at home. On the club’s HO and N scale layouts I’ll run two locos, six cars, and a caboose.
I usually run 6-8 cars but the maximum for my sidings are 10 cars.
I have three trains on the layout at this time. The longest is 25 units pulled by 2 SDP40F’s and a GP40 midtrain helper, next is 18 units pulled by 2 GP38-2’s and the shortest is 10 units pulled by 2 GP40’s.
Manifest trains run 25 cars, coal 28 cars and the Detroit Edison coal train is 30 cars (so I could include mid train helpers). Here is a short video of a couple of them climbing The Loops (open spiral helix) between the two decks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqGZzdJNPNk
Train length determines length of passing sidings on single track, so it comes into play. Passing sidings on mine are 17 1/2’ with a minimum of 35 feet between each.
See ya.
Larry
I have a 12x8 layout, and most of the time its 8-10 cars. From 2-bay hoppers, to boxcars. The most ever pulled was 14 cars. I only have a small Cotton Belt “geep”. Now once I can get more money coming in, I hope to expand the layout out.
Seems like I like to sell off my cars/engines [sigh].
On the layout I’m helping build for a disabled child we can run up to 30 grain hoppers with 2 RS11’s at the point. The smaller mixed freights tend toward 12-15 with 1 or 2 engines at the point.
On my own–right now the grain manifests run around 15 hoppers or grainboxes while the local mixed freights run about 6-10 pieces. All with 1 or 2 engines at the point
I’m still building out on mine—
Mine are usually around 50-60 cars at home and around 40 at the club.
The sidings and staging tracks on my layout limit me to about 15-18 cars, but I’m working on fixing that so I can run at least 20. The way I have my scenery cut up, a 20 car train gives plenty of illusion of being longer.
When I get the itch, I can run 50+, but there’s nowhere to park it!
Lee
This poses the eternal question, a model layout is NOT a scale model of actual surroundings, that is, the trains and buildings may be to scale, but the distances are definitely not to scale, otherwise your layout would have to be 800 feet long, distances between houses, buildings, stations is not possible on a small layout. So presumably you should scale back the length of the train, to put a 40 car train on a reduced layout and having the caboose in one town and the engine in another when in actuality the distance is 26 miles, does not reach prototype scale. BUT who has the space to come close to actual distances.
So it seems everything is prototypical in scale except the actual layout itself, has anyone ever taken this factor in construction of a layout? I think this factor can be related to train speed also, measure a distance on a layout and and see how long it takes for a boxcar to go by a certain spot, now see how long it takes a real boxcar to go by a spot on a railway, it will be much faster than scale speed. I believe this is why model trains seem to go so slow on the layout unless you are reducing the speed to the reduced distance of the layout. I’m sure there are exact formulae for these conversions but they may not convert properly to a model railroad layout.