Building Your Trains

When I run scale stuff, I try to make it look random to be most prototypical or a unit train of coal or stacks. 

 

When running postwar, I will usually run the engine w/ the set it came with ( if I have the cars to match)

Random, like I see in the real world.

 

But I will also do unit trains as I see them as well (intermodal, grain, etc.)

What day of the week it is

What color my mood ring is

If I'm in my jammies or street clothes

How much I've had to drink

What does the dog want to run

 

Seriously, 

Whatever is within arm's reach. No deep thought required. I guess I just don't take the hobby serious enough.

If I ran only cars with the same name as the engine, my trains would be verry short. If i like a car buy it, if not the LHS keeps it. I have nearly 75 rail cars and only about 6 are the same name, forgot I do have 12 Pullman 18 inch cars but run only 6. The other matching cars I have are Louisville & Nashville.

 

Brent

I run what I like or whatever I think looks good.

I try to keep them:

All Scale

With in the time range of 1948 to 1958

Box Cars are brown in this era, so brown is good!
make my coal trains all the same color black and white... just looks cool.

Cement trains - grey cars and covered

Reefers in a unit train- all steel sided with all hatches up or closed

Flat cars all 40 footers and lots of different loads.

 

There is no set rule so what looks cool, I like to run!

 

"A permanent set of rolling stock matched to each engine, never changing:"  I do this for only a very few trains: the Santa Fe Super Chief, the Blue Comet, a Shay-pulled logging trains I have.

 

For everything else, there just one rule: what looks best at the moment.  Even with special roadname rolling stock sets (I have a set 13 ATSF map-slogan cars and a set of 154 PFE reefers), I mix and match if I feel inclined.

While I do 'assemble trains' they are not set in stone. I have a set of Industrial Rail reefers that go behind my RK Cab Forward. And I am collecting some RK Husky Stacks for my WbB custom CSX Dash-9 units. Passenger trains are a little more set. K Line HW cars for my AT&SF Northern, Streamline car set for my C&O Chessie Turbine......etc.

 

I also have traditional freights and scale freights for the different engines. No layout at this moment but will have scale days and traditional days!

Since I don't have a home layout [yet] I usually take a few pieces of rolling stock and a couple of locomotives with me down to the club to run. I also piece together special (longer freights)  and passenger trains for open houses.

 

• I try to keep things matched to operational time frames -- i.e., I don't run early-era outside braced box cars with post-1950 diesels. So the steam-only era cars stay usually with steam engines, an AGEIR box cab or an FT.
• If I want to use modern locomotives, I tend to use at least three in a train with enough modern cars to make it look right, so I've typically run freight trains in excess of 30 feet long at open houses.
• Most of my passenger trains are pre-Amtrak, except for the Metrolink because I ride it to work from time to time and the Turbo train because of its unique place in history. Nothing against Amtrak, but I like the unique character of pre-1971 passenger trains. My goal is to get a few more built up by year's end.
• I lean toward CNW and ATSF, with some other roads thrown in. As the Self-Appointed Information Minister of the Isle of Denial (Where the flags shall never fall), I have no BNSF, Penn-Central, Norfolk-Southern, or CSX locomotives, or equipment, especially BNSF and Penn-Central as those two mergers hit close to home. Heritage Units are Isle-of-Denial approved as they honor the roads they represent. UP (the "Ultimate Predator" or "The Great Absorber") is a unique problem and I do have four UP locomotives -- two GP9's, two SD90M's, and the George H.W. Bush Presidential SD70ACe.
• I've been moving toward road-neutral rolling stock, like TTX and private/leasing company cars.

I start by selecting a caboose (usually whichever is closest to the end on the caboose track). This will determine which engine I use (predecessor railroads are ok here). Sometimes, there is no matching engine, so that caboose has to wait until an engine with an appropriate roadname finds its way back to the terminal.

 

Then I build a train. I usually try to make "blocks" of cars that seem like they might go together in real life: two or three mechanical reefers, or two or three coal hoppers to a small customer, for example. The rest I sort of fill in with boxcars, since we have lots and lots of them.

 

Sometimes the direction of travel I decide on makes a difference. A train heading "southwest" might get more Frisco rolling stock. One going "east" might get more Pennsylvania or NYC cars.

 

Reefers, covered hoppers and coal often travel in unit trains.

 

I try to keep the train roughly era-appropriate. No centerflow hoppers behind steam, for example. (Well, usually!)

I tend to keep the grain and coal hoppers as separate consists All other freight is mix and match

Since my layout represents the early 1950's, I have only friction bearing freight cars.  They range from small cars built in the teens and twenties, to contemporary steel cars of the first term of President Eisenhower.  I favor cars from Santa Fe and its friendly connections (such as GN, MP, Frisco, NYC, Erie, PRR, NKP) but also have some SP, UP, C&NW, NP cars and a few scattered foreign lines.

 

I try to place the wooden cars and empty hoppers and gons toward the rear.  Automobile and furniture double-door cars go on the head end.  Tank cars are at least the 3rd car away from the engine or caboose when practicable.  Company service and maintenance of way boxcars or flatcars are rear end only.

 

On my passenger trains, the working baggage car is always the car ahead of the first passenger carrying car.  Mail and express cars are ahead of the working baggage car.  Chair cars are turned so that seats face forward.  Pullmans are coupled with vestibule ends together.  The diner, when I use one, is between the chair cars and the sleepers, with the lounge car, if used, is between the diner and the first Pullman.  I like to make up secondary passenger trains with a mixture of heavyweight and streamlined cars, and lacking an observation car.  I'm considering mounting a set of Tomar marker lamps on one Pullman and then using that as the rear car when I don't use an observation car.  Right now, my passenger trains that do not have an obs are running without markers, and as a retired railroad official, that does not sit right with me.  When Golden Gate makes a smooth side Santa Fe 2-tone grey streamlined sleeper, that'll probably be the car carrying the markers.  The Grand Canyon ran for years with a grey Valley series sleeper as the rear car.

Usually, I run whatever I feel like at the time.  There are a few exceptions...

 

I have three unit trains...

One is just Tropicana plugged door boxcars.

Second is just Lionel smoke fluid tank cars.

The third is all Lionel Lines bathtub gondolas.

 

Often I'll run a string of just Lionel PS-1 boxcars...any road name.  I only collect locomotives from a few roads, but with rolling stock I'll run any road...that's how I enjoy the other roads.

I model the Seaboard Air Line from 1945 to 1967.  I look for photos that show what kind of cars were in use at the time as well as the different RRs that had cars in the train that the SAL engine was pulling.

 

Here's a page of of an old Railway Age magazine:

 

 

that shows percentages of home cars and cars from foreign RRs.  Look at SAL, they had 10,263 home cars and 13,751 foreign cars on line during April 1950.  That indicates SAL home cars were only 43% of the total cars on the line that month.

 

I would like to follow this, but that means I need to get more foreign road cars, 22 of 42 pieces of rolling stock I own are SAL right now, or 52%.  If my calculations are right I need 9 more foreign road cars to get to the proper mix.

 

Kinda geeky stuff there, but I like to have a purpose for my railroad.

I run all steam. One Smaller Engine pulls a MOW consist that is all Rio Grande.

My Big Boy pulls a longer freight with mixed roads including a majority of UP cars, and has Stock cars, Boxcars, Reefers in groups followed by a UP Caboose.

The 4-8-4 Pulls a mixed Freight with about half Rio Grand, similar to the Big Boy in makeup.

I have other consists I put on the layout at times. Right now the Big Boy is pulling a Military train.

The only Train that is a fixed Consist is the Coors Silver Bullet train with tail car.

I keep my passenger sets together but the frieght trains run by what ever looks good at the moment. I can see in the future when my addition is done that there might be a couple consists built and left.

For freights, I run a scale train and a "traditional" train.  The scale train must make some sense as a consist, in my imaginary world - in terms of types of cars, but not worrying about the owning RR.  The traditional train is just whatever I feel like running at the time.

 

Passenger trains - must match.  I have a number of Lionel FT sets, each runs as a set.

hello guys and gals..........

 

I am building a simple 6 car freight and a caboose in a "postwar" style train using a williams NW-2 diesel and MPC era freight cars and a caboose due to their bright colors and cheap prices. I have upgraded the cars with better die-cast metal trucks and metal brake wheels. When the train is completed,I will post pictures here. the whole train cost me about 300 dollars (tax and shipping included, parts up-graded).

 

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,623

Tiffany

My hard and fast rule of which I never deviate from is it doesn't matter as long as it looks good to me. My wife points out on occasion when a train does not look right to her. I tell her she takes my hobby way to serious.

I am a stickler for the era I am modeling, trying not to get out of that theme (dunno

how that other weird stuff snuck into the train room).  While the logging trains will

haul log cars, lumber flats, pulpwood cars, and a few sawdust gons, and many trains

will pick up coal hoppers, and short trains of those,  ore cars and gons will make up other trains.  Many trains will be mixed, with a combine coach or caboose on the end, and some will be a rail bus alone or a gas electric hauling a coach or even one or two freight cars.  A three car RPO, baggage or combine, and/or coach is expected to be a long passenger train on the through run.  One major service will be the switching of a large urban post office, and there will be moving around of RPO's and baggage cars, moving them to and from the junction with Class 1 railroads. And there is the brewery and sugar beet factory to serve with reefers and gons.  There will be nothing dedicated....except for the log cars and sugar beet gondolas, which won't get off home

road.

Whatever has a siding with a car that has sat too long...that will get switched into the

next train, and if that siding has set empty too long, a car will be sent out to be

dropped off in the next train, maybe even a passenger.. Most cars are from the connecting roads: MP, CRI&P, D&RGW, ATSF, and CB&Q/C&S. Passenger cars in mixed trains are likely to get switched around and delayed as cars are picked up or set out, in the best short line tradition.  The "BIG HOOK" will take care of Class 1 interchanges

at the junction.

For my O scale I run roughly 95% B&O, Chessie B&O, or CSX.  I do have some freight cars in other road names but very very few.  For my G scale I run everything and anything, sorta.

 

I like unit trains of coal.  Mixed freight trains do NOT contain coal hoppers.  I also like consists of just box cars.  And I only run trains in a counterclockwise direction.  LOL

 

Rick

Coal hoppers .... only scale .....  only era correct types ..... no identical road numbers .... mix & match, but only of railroads that would have pulled coal out of Pennsylvania to surrounding areas in 1948

 

Jim