mine usually have had a modest 8 cars.
Bob C.
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Same here Bob for a freight, my longest siding can hold only 8 cars.
But that's fine, my layout isn't very large (12x12) and it's a branch line anyway. Most of the time I only run a 6-car train. I never run more than 1 mainline freight at a time.
When I'm operating, if I find I have more cars to pull out than the layout can handle, I'll send in a local freight to make a pickup of a couple of cars without delivering any cars.
My usual trains at home are 6-10 cars.
At the modular display which is about 21x35, I will run 2 long trains:
The military train, which at this setting is 35 cars. It will be pulled by various engines: Weaver RS units, Lionel Geeps, MTH 4 motors diesel sets , Lionel scale Hudson or here, my Lionel scale Mohawk.
The other long train I pull is the Tropicana train which comes through Richmond 4 days a week. I usually pull it by a combination of NYC, PennCentral & Conrail engines.
I believe this one was 31 cars.
Peter
My longest train, length wise, is 14 Lionel scale auto racks.............Paul
20 odd cars, consisting of 6464, 6436, 6315, 6462, and 6511 types. Most have needle point axles. Postwar equip, probably closer to yalls 8-10 mark.
39 plus 5 motive as seen in the middle of this video. Sometimes i have to "back bunch" the coupler slack and then throttle ahead to get things rolling...plenty of power but wheel slip. My track stays dirty
too lazy to clean it...should probably top off those sand bins
My longest train is the coal drag with 13 "loaded" PW 6446 hoppers plus a scale auxiliary tender and scale caboose. Motive power provided by either MTH Railking Y6b or Lionel Lionmaster Class A.
My railroad has a single track mainline, so the length of trains is determined by the length of passing sidings. Typically sidings have a capacity of one steam engine with a consist of 8 Rail King passenger cars that are 13" long.
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Depends on the size of your layout. For a medium sized 30X30 layout. 25 to 30 freight cars looks like a long freight.
125 Cars. These ran about a month ago on the TMB club Layout 4 Williams diesels on point and two members supplied the trains. Here is the link to the You tube video
Hmm, 9 replies so far and no one has posted a length yet. (Number of cars doesn't translate or equate to length because they could be 8" or 22" long). Ya know, inches, feet, scale feet, etc
I am planning a new layout and according to scarm, I'll be able to fit almost a mile-long train on the main loop. I wonder what i will actually achieve.
I cannot top 125 cars......I have 4 Lionel Frisco Diesels that pull 56 feet for train cars. I really enjoy watching this train sometimes meets itself around the layout.....(goes around a curve).
Martin H posted:Hmm, 9 replies so far and no one has posted a length yet. (Number of cars doesn't translate or equate to length because they could be 8" or 22" long). Ya know, inches, feet, scale feet, etc
I am planning a new layout and according to scarm, I'll be able to fit almost a mile-long train on the main loop. I wonder what i will actually achieve.
Google this
"Three Rail 0 Scale train 100 feet long"
Thats my personal best, I can't access my Youtube account anymore 
Clem
For which gauge?? I run S and O gauge...
Marty
Martin Derouin posted:For which gauge?? I run S and O gauge...
Marty
Why not answer in scale feet? Then the gauge doesn't matter?
Clem's 100' train on youtube, awesome.......
Since I'm rebuilding my O gauge Hi-Rail layout, I can't say how many actual cars I will be able to run just yet. I may try it some day just for fun, but realistically the longest train continuously on my layout will be based on my storage yard tracks. Right now (more plan modifications are forthcoming), my two longest storage tracks are 34'. This would be a scale 1,630' long. Using this as a guide, I have purchased this passenger train which should fit: Lionel E7 ABA, two Weaver B60b, and a mix of 14 GGD and K-Line 21" passenger cars. The other track will be for a freight made up of a MTH Decapod and MTH M1b double-headed (this will alternate with a Lionel J1a or 3rd Rail N1), a cabin and as many freight cars as can fit. That could be up to 30 cars.
Robert,
With double and triple heading my GG1 pulled Military Train, I run out of platform space before I get any where near the max rollings stock the GG1's can actually pull, so I keep the rollings stock to around 15 Cars max, depending on their length. Now the Scale Legacy Northern Pacific Christmas Box Car Train, can border on being around 20 cars at times, again depending on the size of the cars, and I just made a deal on another lighted Christmas box Car. I also picked up a Conventional Santa Coca Cola Train to run Christmas Trains on every level of the layout, Christmas morning, I will be adding some additional Christmas rolling stock to it also.
PCRR/Dave
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passenger train- 36 feet 1 inch. 14 21" cars, 3 18" cars and ABBBA for power at 17" each.
freight train- 105 feet 9 inches. 65 freight cars and F3 ABA-SD70ACe-4-8-4 for power.
Years ago I had the Lionel blue EMD ABA, I ran a mixed consist of 20 cars all around the edges of a 9x12 layout table. That was fun to watch...
At the San Diego 3-Railers I have done 51 cars with my Lionmaster Big Boy. Another Club member did 104 with 4 MTH Railking SD70ACE
The 12 car Ca Zephyr and CB&Q E-8 A B A.
Mikey
All great answers. I can relate to number of cars better than the number of feet regardless of the gauge.
For me it would make a difference between running postwar cars, sprung truck cars or mpc plastic truck cars.
At least now I know where all the tank carswent.t
The most cars i have pulled is 15!
39 Weaver club cars with An MTH Dash 8, and K LIne SD 45. I could probably pull more, but would have to weight them.
Don
Even though I have a very large layout, I don't run very long trains, due to grades and siding lengths. I keep them to about a 15 car limit. I also don't run multiple engines on a train, so that figures into that number too.
I have run 30 or 35 freight cars with 2 powered Williams SD-45's, one at the front and one in the back. I have run 28 freight cars with the Williams S-2 Pennsy steam engine.
For my new layout I think I will limit the number of freight cars to 12, passenger cars to 8 or 9.
Lee Fritz
My layout is 8x20 O gauge and the longest train I pull on it is a 15 car mixed freight hauled by a Lionel legacy Heritage SD70ACE in the Virginian fantasy livery. If my layout was larger I could easily haul at least twice that many cars with that engine as well as with my JLC TMCC GG1.
I pulled 72 coalporters with a MTH proto2 SP Cabforward. I think there are about 43 cars on in this video, but we kept adding as the day went on.
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Our Dining and living rooms are combined, and for a couple Christmas seasons, I had two loops of O-72 and O-82 around the perimeter, about a 13x24 space. The longest trains I ran were 55 cars, mostly behind my Scale Articulated Steamers. Even my Lionel Mikado jr. managed the 55 car trains without wheel slip or struggling, needless to to say the scale FEF-3's and GS-4's didn't have any trouble either. The Berkshire jr. slipped a bit on starting, but managed well once it had the train moving. The real surprise was the Lionel 0-6-0T Docksider, it started a 46 car train unassisted, but got hot after about 5 minutes run time, reduced to 41 cars it didn't get hot.
The cars were an extremely varied mix, including to some real heavy weights like the TMCC crane and boom cars, K Line die cast Evans Auto-Loaders with die cast cars, to scale tank cars and some lighter cars like the Weaver PS2 covered hoppers and flat cars, some with, some without loads.
I have gotten my Nephews started in O Gauge trains, 2 in Union Pacific, 1 in Santa Fe and another in NYC. One year I had gotten the boys the starter set 0-8-0 switchers for Christmas, Uncle Doug deemed it a Good Idea to Play with, er, Uhm, TEST 
, the boys new trains before Christmas, I ran one of the UP, 2 Different ATSF paint schemes and an NYC on the head end of the 55 car train, with an additional UP pushing on the rear, once I got all the E Units in sync that was a lot of Fun.
Train length with the H-7 or AC-9 articulateds was around 38-40 feet, and I would have to break the train when parking it, so as not to block the entrance from the kitchen to the dining room, or the Patio door.
Doug
Big_Boy_4005 posted:Even though I have a very large layout, I don't run very long trains, due to grades and siding lengths. I keep them to about a 15 car limit. I also don't run multiple engines on a train, so that figures into that number too.
Elliot, on a nicely sceniced layout, too long of a train is an excellent way to destroy the illusion of distance. I am a not very active member of a large HO club here in Portland, OR. The Columbia Gorge Model Railroad Club's layout is 60x70, and our normal Freight trains are 15 cars as well. when we run special trains, like the "Thomas" train that has just about all the different Thomas the train characters on flat cars, it is probably 50+ cars long, or a member has the "yellow Snake" a UP train of about 90-100, 50 or 60 foot boxcars, the train is in 3 different towns at the same time, and just doesn't look right. Even in HO, it would take a truly massive layout to make even a 50 car train look right.
Doug
At NJ Hirailers we have a good size layout and have run one hundred car plus trains. On the average twenty five to forty car freight trains are normal. I have run scale Passenger trains with ten or twelve cars. www.njhirailers.com
On my modest 5 by 12 layout, typical car count for my trains is around 8-18 freight cars, 5-12 for passenger, with one locomotive and occasionally two on the front or one on the head end and one pushing. The longest train I have ever ran was 30 cars, although it did look quite goofy as the locomotive chased it's caboose around the layout!
challenger3980 posted:Big_Boy_4005 posted:Even though I have a very large layout, I don't run very long trains, due to grades and siding lengths. I keep them to about a 15 car limit. I also don't run multiple engines on a train, so that figures into that number too.
Elliot, on a nicely sceniced layout, too long of a train is an excellent way to destroy the illusion of distance. I am a not very active member of a large HO club here in Portland, OR. The Columbia Gorge Model Railroad Club's layout is 60x70, and our normal Freight trains are 15 cars as well. when we run special trains, like the "Thomas" train that has just about all the different Thomas the train characters on flat cars, it is probably 50+ cars long, or a member has the "yellow Snake" a UP train of about 90-100, 50 or 60 foot boxcars, the train is in 3 different towns at the same time, and just doesn't look right. Even in HO, it would take a truly massive layout to make even a 50 car train look right.
Doug
That's a good point Doug. My mainline is about six scale miles long, but it represents a stretch of track in the real world that is 60 miles long. That is a 10:1 compression rate. Now if we translate that ratio to train length, 10 to 15 cars seems very reasonable, when each car represents 10 cars.
I'm have to recant my post. Running trains tonight I counted the car carriers and I have 20 on the mainline not 14. Have to learn how to count again LOL.............Paul
My longest mixed freight train had 47 boxcars pulled by a mth railking mountain ps2.Very strong locomotive and still seems that it could pull more.But the couplers started pop open.
The type of car can greatly affect the length of the train.
My '30 Car Rampage' consists of a pair of K-Line Plymouths with 30 of the two-axle ore cars. Physically it's a very small train, but with so many cars (it's triple-headed with 40 cars now) it just draws attention to itself, kind of like a centipede on rails. Here it is running on the NJ Hirailers layout during Trainstock in 2013:
A longer train of short cars is my 51-car ore train:
Bigger cars mean fewer in number, but the length is still impressive for the available space: MPC autoracks
I think the Premier MTH autoracks do a better job of making a longer train. (I know the new Lionel 'racks are longer, but I already had 50 of these):
Longest passenger train? The Amtrak Auto-Train, without a doubt:
Actual train length in feet? That'll take a little google-ing and poking at a virtual calculator, but this is what I came up with:
-Double-headed Plymouths and 30 ore hoppers: 11.2'
-51-car ore train: 29'
-MPC autorack train: 39.5'
-MTH Premier autorack train: 43'
-Auto Train: 37.6 feet
I'm sure my train of MTH York boxcars rates in the middle of this range, but I have yet to run it with all the cars I have on hand, but figure a pair of Premier ES44's and 30 34 of those 40' boxcars.
Now, I have 50 of the Premier auto carriers, but there's no way I can run all them where I live. The MPC autorack train now has 37 cars, and the Plymouth switcher train is triple-headed with 40 of the two-axle hoppers. The Auto Train could grow by three more autoracks, but I don't want to run those until their Phase III decoration is updated.
---PCJ
Ran about 40 Atlas reefers pulled by a single Atlas 2-rail TMCC RS-1 on a one-day carpet layout at my kid's school.
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I've had up to 37 cars behind an MTH Big Boy on my big room-perimeter floor layout. The limiting factors are a 180-degree horseshoe bend with O54 curves and mostly postwar cars that have a fair bit of drag. Some couplers needed adjusting to not pull apart. The BigBoy train has its own mainline circuit; I doubt it could stay on the track pulling though the curved leg of a switch.
My other O-gauge trains generally run up to 8 feet long, limited by the lengths of layover tracks. I have a couple of smaller one-train layouts with short trains. I like the variety of different operations, large and small.
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