Who has bought a train that is too big for your layout?

I haven't done it on purpose but it has happened a few times to me by accident. I have a set of Williams PRR passenger cars thet I really like.  I had to take a dremmel and alter the fronts and rearsoaf all but the last car. 

I also have an engine that I had to alter the trucks on.

I must say the big cars do look good.  I don't blame you at all for wanting and getting them. You do get to run them now and then which is nice also.

I have a rail King Allegheny and with its 6 wheel trailing truck its a long distance from the rear driver to the end of the cab so it really has a wide swing and hits a bridge on my layout and I am unwilling to replace the bridge and the way you have to sell for a greatly reduced price I am unwilling to do that so it sits.

My MTH Chessie Turbine was too big for my layout at the time....I ran it on club layouts. But it will be fine on the new with O-90 curves!

No layout (at least before the micro layout contest) so technically everything I have was too big for my layout. I can switch a small diesel and a couple of 40-foot cars on the micro.

My 1.6" scale Pacific is way too big for my available space.  700 lbs of pure steam fun.

One of my previous layouts was only 0-31. Bought Lionel's Reading T1 and had a loop of 0-54 to run on the floor until I added an 0-54 loop to the layout.

Count me in. I bought the TMCC C&O yellow belly(?), when at the time I thought that Lionel was only making engines that would run on 031-036. Now it's a shelf queen under glass. I originally thought it was a dressed up N&W bullet nose. I also bought a Lionel Rio Grande(one of 1st Odyssey) that I have problems but sees very little service.  Now if it doesn't run on my track, I won't buy it.

It's not that the size of the trains are too big.  It's just that the layout was built too small. 

I first had this happen when I bought some K-Line Heavyweight Passenger cars and found out the hard way that o36 Fastrack was too small and the outer loop was expanded to o48. Barely works and I later bought 2 dd35a units that barely fit....

Oh well.

I have a small home layout and am a member of a club/museum. While my home layout has 0-72 and STD-87 curves, at 13' square it is so small that large locomotives like a 4-12-2, a Cab Forward, or even a scale Northern look pretty silly, let alone a train of scale 84' (21") passenger cars. I can test run most anything at home, but I tend to stick to Mikados or smaller at home and run the big stuff on open house days at the museum. 

Ya think?!?

Remember, if your trains don't fit on your layout, you don't have too many trains; your layout is too small. Enlarge it!

If your layout expansion won't fit in your house, your layout isn't too big; your house is too small. Expand it!

Sort of: I have, and will, keep buying big, scale, articulated locomotives like Yellowstones and H-7s and S-1s even though they don't "fit" my layout.  I have one loop that is nothing but 72" and larger curves so technically they will run on my layout.  But boiler stick out is so ridiculous (almost three inches on a scale Big Boy) that they look silly.  Worse: to squeeze what I want into my layout I have positioned buildings and trees too close to the track in places to have clearance for this much stick-out - so to run them I have to temporarily remove two buildings and about a dozen trees.

Despite this, I like having the big locos on display and I do run them once a year or so. 

I have bought too many trains for the available room on my layout (and on my shelf), but never one that was too big to run on my layout (though the Hogwarts express was close, I lucked out that I had done the outside loop in O-42, because I found a loop of it in a used track box I had, and just kinda did it, not knowing what it was).

I basically do this too. I have O72s at home, but 11x11'. I have quite a few trains that either by length of cars, or length of the entire train, look stupid, so I take them to modular shows and run them there.

Oh Yes!!!  It was a good excuse to build a new layout. 

Tom

I was stationed in Germany when I bought my first 072 only Lionel engine, the scale PRR T1.  I didn't take any 072 curves with me when we divied up the trains at Ft Eustis.  All the 072 went into storage.  Not that there was that much.

The T1 saw alot of back and forth action on straights.  I was mesmerized by its size, sounds, side rod action, etc.

Every subsequent layout had as a minimum a loop of 072.  Usually a reverse loop.  The 072 stuff gets run now, regularly.

Bingo, We have a winner

Truthfully tho, I understand space limits, I have them, tho not as bad as some others.

My current layout cannot run big scale equipment, but I don't have any.

My Future layout (In Very Slow Progress) will be able to run Everything.

And I really wish there was a club in reasonable driving range...

I've got an Atlas Suburban propane tankcar and an MTH Schnabel that are both way too big to run on my layout. I knew that when I bought them but they looked so cool and I figured I'd eventually build a layout where they could be run.

Jerry

Yep... I wanted to have all three Lionel Chessie Steam Specials... Got the 6-8003 release from the early 80's and the 6-31734 from 2005... just one left to get! 

After some extensive shopping, I landed the 6-18011 T-1, which is the size of my leg and the weight of a boat anchor.  In all fairness, it will make it around O36, but with a lot of wheel spin and knocking over my scenery in the process.  Whoops!

I learned the hard way that scale size trains do not run well on 042 curves, and they look terrible on curves less than 082. I even tried 15" long passenger cars, but they gave me grief.

Today I run only MTH Rail King 13.5" passenger cars, and 10" freight cars. These are larger than Lionel's 027, and they give a nice overall appearance in 7 and 8-car consists. Performance of the 13.5" passenger car consists backing through 042 switches is really good.

A 7-car passenger train of 13.5" cars plus a steam road engine occupies approximately 10 feet of track. Scale equipment would occupy almost twice that length of track.

In my opinion, scale size trains are for large club layouts and those fortunate to have layouts with 100 inch and larger curves. To me, it's all about the overall impression, and not the rivet count.

Height is more of my problem - a lot of my woodside and steelside cabooses' cupolas, Unibody tank cars, and older Lionel SD40 and Dash 8's are too tall to run underneath my 497 coaling station.

when Kline was still in business, bought a Kline

collectors club Viginian Train Master.

Didnt realize how long they are and when run at

Train shows, had to run it on the 2nd inside loop

and couldnt run anything on the outside loop

because of the overhang from the locomotive,

because it would knock anything on the outside loop OFF!

Bought a Williams scale GG1 on blowout last year. Always wanted one. Great price, but did not anticipate the massive overhang. Had to engineer a new loop just for it, and even then it scraped a couple of times. It does look ridiculous on smaller curves.

Bob

When I built my 8 x 12 out in the garage, I didn't really know much beyond the traditional size engines I already owned and had been running on the Carpet Central.  I positioned these portals right at the beginning of my 0-72 curves on the two ground-level loops.  Bad idea.  As I got more into cars from MTH, Atlas and others, I discovered many wouldn't fit through the turns.  At one point, I took my Dremel and cut into the right-side wall of the tunnel in the foreground (you can see the resulting narrower support in the picture in between the two tracks).  

Now I can run 33k tank cars and stack cars on the outer loop....BUT, the stack cars can't be double stacked because they won't clear the top of the portal!!  Sigh!

Even with the little bit of modification i still have several engines I've never run...

DD40AX

Centipedes

a T-1 4-4-4-4

C&O "yellow-belly" Hudson

...all of which still cannot fit through the turns.  I also have an Amtrak California double decker passenger set that won't fit because the coaches are too high.  So they sit in storage, patiently waiting for the day when there's a layout that will accommodate them.  

I suppose if I saw something I really wanted, knowing beforehand it was too big, but it was a great deal etc., I might buy it with an eye toward the future.  But for the most part, I try to stay away from those types of buying decisions.   I have enough to keep me happy (for now!)

- Mike

I was thrilled when I came up with enough space to use  72 in curves, and would be able to purchase a Premier Challenger, and Bigboy to run on the layout. Didn't think that this minimum curve, while capable of holding the loco on the curve was going to look odd because of the loco's overhang. Fortunately I only bought one before I realized 72 minimum really means you need a larger radius turn for the loco to look right!

I am sure we all do, its the nature of the beast!

Here are those CZ cars going around a 072... and its not pretty!

But on the straight aways they sure look beautiful!

MTH Turbine. I have 072" Ross track but would not negotiate a couple of curves.

When MTH brought out its first Rio Grande Challenger, I thought "D&RGW?!!....gotta have one of those".....But in deciding on a "permanent" layout and what I would model. it made sense to me to model a shortline with smaller engines and rolling stock, so the Challenger will sit awaiting helper service for which the call won't come on an unpowered siding off the Class One connection of about six feet of track to nowhere, maybe a step above being a shelf queen. But I keep lobbying and proselyting

for a Little River 2-4-4-2 so I can have an articulated that would look at home on a

short line.  With space and radius problems in the scale, I am surprised no one sees

this market.

Not hard for me to buy to big; I have 2 o27 loops with switches  and one o31. I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for all of you with o72 turns. LOL

I have 72" and 54" curves on my main lines. My 18" passenger equipment looks OK on the 72" curves but approaching unacceptable on the 54" curves...especially on the 54" S section. I can hear the "conductor" warning people NOT to move from car to car on the S section

K-Line's scale PRR NC-5 caboose. The antenna wouldn't go through the #317 bridge until I changed the track on it to 027, and it smacks into the brakeman tell-tales as well. 

Well since I like Coors, My wife surprised me one Christmas a few years back with the MTH Silver bullet set. It will not fit through most of my bridges so it went back into the box without ever making a trip around the layout. It has been a shelf queen since.  But I'm not telling her that.

...while the Chessie M1 fits my modular layout just fine, it didn't fit my buddy's module quite as well.  No matter, with a full load of smoke fluid and running near top speed, it made it all the way through his module without stopping.  Took a while before he got all the building divots and trackside accessories put back together again. 

r0d

Even though I have a large layout with 072 minimum curves, I never thought I would buy a Big Boy and a Challenger. The Big Boy sits on a shelf where I can see it every day. The Challenger makes it most places on the mainline, and with a few adjustments to the layout it should be fine.

Come to think of it, when I designed and started to build my layout, Lionel wasn't making those monsters yet.

I bought two MTH premier auto carriers to run on my O60 outer loop.  I ran them twice and wound up getting rid of them.  My outer loop is 6' x 13.5'.  They just didn't look right.

I built with the ideal of running scale equipment, 072 plus curves, etc. I used the largest cars that I owned, which was a MTH autorack. I had to raise the Railking tunnel portals so the autorack would clear. All is great til Christmas 2010 when I received a MTH scale stack car and the top container would not clear the tunnel. So I run it with only the bottom container.

Tight tunnel.  I also used a homebuilt "Big Hook" boom car that is a scale 98 feet for my longest car so to check all my track for side clearance. I can also switch over to the second main that the tunnel was daylighted if I need too. My track clearance in all other parts of the layout is 6 to 7 inches above the tops of the rail.

I haven't really but I did find I run A-A F-3s and not use the B unit much. Also my GE box cabs I run with two unit not three. I just think they look better. Don