how many cars in your running consist?

My C&O two bay coal hopper train is about 60+ cars (all individual road numbers & weathered), and on the modular layout I run the whole train. At home, it seems like 40 or so of the hoppers looks best.

I tend to run at least 24 cars, not including the motive power & caboose, on my home layout and 30 or more reefers (all individual road numbers) look great also, whether they are PFE, Northern Pacific, WFE (Great Northern), or a mix of eastern roads (NKP, DL&W, NYC, FGE, & Burlington Route).

My trains vary depending on the job.

All cars have unique numbers because I use a sstem to route them to various industries on the layout with switchlists. The switchlist tells the operator which car goes where when working the industries. Won't work if there are duplicate numbers.

Through freights max out at about 25 cars and locals max about 15. The through freights are limited by the passing siding lengths and the staging track lengths.

The locals are just limited because it seems silly to have a local longer than a through freight.

My switching system has a lot variability built into it, and therefore the maximm train lengths are noted, they can and ofter are shorter.

Each train in each operating session is differnt because the system routes each individually.

quote:

Originally posted by MOZGAWA:
I once had the pleasure of visitin a 2-rail private layout where the guy had over 100 same road name but different hopper numbers being pulled by a string of three diesels.

Obviously, this is not practical for most of us.

In magazines it seems the optimum is 10 cars not including the engine and caboose.

How many cars or all types in your running consist?

Warmest,

Rob Mozgawa
Madison, WI

At Trainfest 2010, I was running 24 cars plus the waycar.



At I-hobby 2010, I was running 28 and a way car behind my R-2/



Most of my trains running on the Independent Hirailers Midwest Division railroad are around the 20-25 car range. That seems to be the best compromise for good unit performance, and fits nicely into our yard tracks.

The two unit trains owned by Mark and Sasquatch were a bit longer on the same railroad.



Regards,
GNNPNUT

My tiny yard only holds 8 cars, my sidings can hold about twice that. Normally I only bring on no more than 8, but if I'm picking up empties while dropping off loads the train could grow to 24 cars (if I clean out all the sidings).

That's my reality, but I sure do like watching consists like the ones that have been mentioned so far

On my wide radius presentation loops about 12 freight cars and 6 passenger cars.
Click picture to view.



On the 72" traditional tables 8 freight and 5 passenger cars works for passing sidings and the yard.

On the FCTT layouts:
-10 Empire State Express passenger cars.
-unit trains of 16-24 cars are long enough to suspend disbelief, but not so long to take up the whole day unpacking, running and packing up. On one of our huge layouts, two of us have run a 47 car Pacemaker unit train pulled by a Niagara. I think only 8 cars from prototypical max length.
-1930's era Lackawanna 10-14 car milk train.

Last night I was running several trains but one had 84 cars, all boxcars, mixed types and lengths with one caboose on the end and three diesels up front....pure pleasure!!!

Alan

I have run as many as 30 freight cars on my layout, but with that number the consist will only fit one passing siding. ( And that track was actually designed to hold two 14 or 15 car trains.) So my operations are designed around 10 to 15 car trains, and that seems to work out well. I kind of like peddler or way freights, stopping at each town and dropping off and picking up cars from local industries. I usually had a controller to a visiting fireman (guest) for a passenger train, (five or six 18" to 21" cars) and tell him to make all the stops along the way, watching out for my way freight. If I get two guests, I'll hand another controller to the other guy and send him out of the way down the "branch line", so he'll pick up and switch coal cars, gravel cars or tank cars from the industry down there. On the branch line the max. limit of cars is either 5 with a small diesel or 3 with a small steam engine.

The heck of it is that I certainly have well over 200 freight cars, but there's only room on the layout itself, with the yards, the industrial sidings and the holding tracks for less than 100 freight cars.

Wish it were a larger layout, but ya gotta dance with the girl ya brung.

Paul Fischer

In one of the OGR Video's of YesterYear, they showed a video made at Mr. Weavers basement, of Weaver Models, and WOW--100 plus consist, looked good, ran good, and was a fun video to watch. Thats a lot of cars for a 3Rail Scale train to pull....

We run anywhere up to about 40 cars on the club layout (generally). There have been times when longer freights have rolled on by though...

I usually run about 12 to 15 cars, less to bring up and down the stairs at the club.

Now that I have DCS I've been running 2 engines/trains at the same time. I usually have an inbound train of 5-6 cars running up mileage around the loop while the switcher moves cars from industries to the small yard for the inboundt train to pick up. Between the 2 I generally have maybe a dozen, gets tricky when they swap inbound for outbound cars!

The one thing I have noticed with DCS & 2 trains is the amount of noise has increased. Even with the sounds turned down/off on the train looping the track, the clickety-clack is loud enough that I have a hard time hearing the switcher.

It could be the small 12x12 room just can't handle all the noise, do you guys running longer (I assume bigger layouts) trains noticed the noise more? The Tinnitus in both ears doesn't help any (sounds like a 400 cycle hum of a Navy generator)

It seems everyone is considering the physical aspects in their answers in this thread.

Why aren't people mentioning their operating requirements? Why don't people on this forum mentioning their switchlists (and how generated) or the use of car cards or some sort of car forwarding that causes the trains to be made up and move across the layout?

quote:

Originally posted by prrjim:
It seems everyone is considering the physical aspects in their answers in this thread.

Why aren't people mentioning their operating requirements? Why don't people on this forum mentioning their switchlists (and how generated) or the use of car cards or some sort of car forwarding that causes the trains to be made up and move across the layout?

I do have a program that generates traffic, it's called "Model Railroad Dispatch" and it was made by Bob Fischer. It was developed in DOS and it's been so long that I've messed with DOS I can't get it to print out a report.

I tried using the online program from Dallas Model Works, but I need more time to learn it. I've entered my engines and rolling stock, even my industries, but again can't seem to get anything printed out. There's something about having photos of your cars (and some other info) that I don't have at my fingertips to enter.

Has anyone else tried this program? I only have 30+ cars and it took me a while to enter all the data, I can't imagine what someone with 100+ cars is looking at.

Just for fun I even used the roll of a pair of dice to determine how many cars that would make up inbound and outbound trains, but that can leave you with too many or not enough if you're not careful. It can work though if you do some planning (check to see how many cars are already in a siding) and if there's less cars for an outbound train than the dice indicated you simply take what you have. It's simple, maybe too simple, but it does generate traffic.

It's interesting that prrjim mentioned switch-lists. I'm gonna guess that many operators don't do that, I could be wrong though...

I remember several articles using index cards and color coding with stickers to create trains. This may be a better way for you Bob, check the last couple of years of MRR magazine for that subject. You could also use your 'Yahtzee' Dice, that may work out better! lol

I have not done this kind of operating yet... I'd like to but since my home layout is not in operation at the moment and I only bring 15 cars or so to the club, it's not practical yet. I do some minor switching on the club layout, but during shows it's very hard to complete tasks of that nature.

We could run in excess of 50-75 cars if not for our Freeman reverse loop that I would like to combine with the other end of the layout for a complete loop.

Right now its 45 reefers and a UP Big-Boy and a CA-X caboose.

I run up to thirty cars behind a dual power locomotive. Alas, I don't have sidings to accomodate the train length, so 15 to 18 is the norm. Has anyone converted an MTH PS2 to TMCC? I would like to convert my SW1 to TMCC, as it is a dog when it runs in conventional mode.

 

Lou

I run a average of 15 cars(10 to 20) on main #1 and 5 to 10 cars on main #2. I have one powered engine and 1 to 2 dummy engines on each train. I'm not 3RS. My longest straight track section is approx 30 feet long. The curves are 072 and 080. I would like to try a 30 to 40 car train one these days, just not tried it. I run scale size cars from MTH, Lionel, Weaver, Atlas, K-line.