Anyone mix passenger cars of different scale lengths?

I have 25 Santa Fe aluminum rib-sided passenger cars - nine K-line 18" with full interiors, eight Lionel 16" with silohettes, and eight Lionel 16" with interiors.  They all look nearly identical except for length.  I often run a combination of 14 cars with interiors - all the K-line cars in order except the final roudned stern observ car, with five of the Lionel cars with interiors next - leaving out that set's s baggage and combo cars which if I put up forward where they belong would look obviously shorter, done this way the transition fro 18" to 16" is hardly noticeable.  By contrast, running a combination of silohette and interors cars is much more noticeable as a mixed bag.

I see nothing wrong with mixing 60', 70' and 80' passenger cars. Especially for the not "well known" trains and local passenger runs. 

If they're all truly scale then I wouldnt see the issue. There's lots of "short" head end cars, commuter cars, etc... that would look right at home.  If you're referring to the selectively compressed cars, like the "scale" 70' streamliners, they look out of place with the full scale cars, at least to my eyes.

Here's a video of my troop train... 4 weaver troop cars (the size of a 50' boxcar) and 2 GGD Pullmans (about 21"). In the realm of "actually possible", something like this was probably fairly plausable.

I plan on running my scale streamlined Williams cars with scale height Lionel cars, but that are short.  As for heavyweights, the Madisons and scale Lionel cars really don't look that good.

 

On the other hand, I have 2-tone grey heavyweights from Lionel, K-Line and Williams... All scale size, with each having a different white striping pattern and different grays...

 

oh well... Looks like I'll have to run 3 separate trains!

 

Thanks,

Mario.

To answer the last portion of your post, yes, the real railroads ran cars of various lengths.  RPO and Bagage cars were usually shorter than regular passenger cars.  Straight coaches and Pullman cars were in varying lengths. Some dining cars were a single car where as others were a compound/articulated style of car.  Unlike modelers, the railroads were into it for the business.  They ran what they needed to get the job done to meet or excede the bottom line.  Class A passenger trains, when new, sometimes, were a matched set of cars.  What a beautiful train they made and what we as modelers love to have.  Once these trains had lost their lusture, they started getting mixed in with other variations and moved on down the roster until they were turned into company service cars or scrapped.  If you are not a scaler, then run what you want, the way you want, when you want and enjoy the prides of your fleet.

The "Rainbow Era" of early Amtrak had a wild mix of different equipment.

 

Personally, I prefer matched sets for aesthetics. But feel free to run whatever looks good to you on your own layout!

In the days of railroad owned passenger trains, the railroads did mix up car lengths within a trains.  In fact, many baggage, RPO and other "head end" cars were often shorter because they carried heavy materials.  Passenger cars had no danger of weight overloads because they were all built to handle X number of passengers and some hand carried baggage, so they could be 82' to 85' in length.  Most passenger cars, in the days of steel and then lightweight cars, were built anywhere from 60" to as much as 85' in length and the railroads ran them together as needed.

 

Paul Fischer

I do not. But I see nothing wrong with those who do. I usually buy the engine and the passenger cars at the same time as a set. They naturally would be of the same length. So it comes down for me as a matter of what you have.

I have run the Madisons with the Baby Madisons - looks a little awkward, but the paint jobs match so I ignore the difference in size.

I mix colors and road names as well. Many railroads west of Chicago had "pullcars" with different cars going through to different cities. You see CB&Q coaches and sleepers on NP name trains all the time.

 

By the way I purchased this K line Milwaulkee set and some cars are 18 and others 21 inches long, yet they look good together...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

only when I drink

This is kind of like the other question posted about mixed trains....the railroads, as

posted above, ran what was handy and would get the job done, most cost effectively.  What I would like to see is a photo of a prototypical train running those really short headend cars (RPOS's?, 20-40') the SP rostered, and have been done in brass in O scale....with longer cars.  I think one was run on the Virginia and Truckee, too?  I think another road ran a really short lightweight headend car? I believe the

SP's were roundroof heavyweights.

Hi.  Thanks everyone for the interesting and varied responses.  I've come to the conclusion that it isn't so much the mixing of different scale length cars as it is the limitations of my own layout.  If you have a 7-car passenger train running down the long side of a 20' x 30' layout varied car lengths probably don't seem at all out of place, whereas on a small layout like my 8 x 12, the perspecgtive just looks a little more forced.  The cars themselves "jump out" more...they don't have the opportunity to blend into the scenery and background so much.  So any difference in length, say between 15 inch cars and 18 inch cars, will seem greatly magnified.

 

At least that's my own unscientific opinion!!    Again, thanks for your thoughts.

 

- Mike