Longest trains?

Hey,
My daughter asked me yesterday what the longest train I ever ran in HO was. I told her about one time I pulled 74 cars with an old Athearn 2 motor DD-35. The train was always in at least 2, 28 inch radius curves while it was running the layout, if it had a longer straight run I probably get more on it. How 'bout you?
Mike

On our old club modular layout, we ran a 70 car coal train. It was pulled by 3 Athearn GP38's. The layout had 42" radius turns with a slight elevation.

The longest I've been involved in running was between 75 and 80 cars, all pulled by a single Challenger. It probably could have been a couple of cars longer before the train wouldn't fit into the reversing loops.

Hi All,

There are some people that take this as a challenge and routinely press the capabilities of a Model RR club layout. Occasionally you will find a private layout that has extreme length and so they can get away with trains that approach 100 cars. I believe that such a layout was shown in an old Model RR magazine and the owner actually ran 100 car freights on it. As I remember it, he would triple head such a train. Just another aspect of how many variations of interests you find in model RR'ing.

Of course, this leads to an addendum to the subject: How many cars, Passenger type, have you run ??? I have gotten as far as 12 full length passenger cars, hauled by double headed PRR F-7's by Penn Line. These engines produce a sound that resembles a diesel growl under such a load, and really sounds prototypical.

I've seen some seriously long trains at one home layout over in Phelps, NY - they could EASILY run 100 car trains, since most of the locomotives are cast metal, and there's plenty of track length!

I pulled a 100 car train with 3 P2K SD60's. It was a one time deal, now I just run 20-25 car trains.

At the club I attend operating sessions on fridays in DCC we run 2 or 3 locomotives with up to about 80 car coal trains. Right now we have one that has 2 AC4400ws pulling about 60-70 BN coal hoppers. The trains have to fit right inside of the switches for the double track upper loop, thats usually where they end up getting parked since they tend to clog up operations with their slow speeds and covering alot of the passing crossovers. It does add to the challenge of the operating session to be routing my NJ Transit commuters and other smaller freights around the coal trains. As the passenger trains do go pritty quickly.

The most NJT Walthers cars I have pulled was 8 with the stock wheels behind a U34CH. Stock wheels have alot of friction! so this adds to the drawbar pull required to move the cars. Just like the real thing reducing rolling friction will greatly increase the amount of cars your locmotives can pull.

My Dad had about 70 cars on our layout, which for the most part is curves and hills (Like it's Prototype, the former CP Moosehead Sub in Maine). Because of that it required pushers about halfway back, and maybe on the rear, can't remember for sure - mostly Athearn units. Pretty impressive but a pain to put away (Guess who got to put it away).

Allot of trail and error - "I don't think it'll make it around that curve" - "Sure it will" - crash - ".............. Guess not"

The Southern New England O-Scale group, who are always set up at the big show in Springfield, Mass (Start saving now) put on some huge trains that are always an impressive sight, never leave without watching that for a few moments.

-Justin

The Model Railroad Club inUnion, NJ ran a 500 car train once. The best I could do on my own layout was 93 cars.

I pulled all 54 of my mixed freight cars with a single (weighted) Athearn AC4400CW the other day. It made it most of the way around the layout (very curvy with a minimum 36" radius) but stalled at one point (2% grade approaching an overpass). I normally split the cars into two trains.

Side thought... in a crazy quest to build a seriously massive engine, I assembled a Hobbytown E-8 chassis with a Cary shell, then added two of the old Hobbytown lead weights. This engine now weighs just over three pounds!

Since I'm just starting a layout, I'll have to talk a friend into seeing how many cars this beast can haul. Oh, it has the low speed gearset too, so starting a long train should not be an issue. I wonder how much a Kadee coupler can take...

We did test it on another layout and it sagged a bridge!

I read in a magazine of a huge modular layout that had an 80-inch minimum radius where they regularly ran trains of over 100 cars. Someday, I'd love to model the area where I live, which sees 80-car freights (the sweeping nearby curve would translate to a 32-foot radius in HO)

Side thought... in a crazy quest to build a seriously massive engine, I assembled a Hobbytown E-8 chassis with a Cary shell, then added two of the old Hobbytown lead weights. This engine now weighs just over three pounds!

Since I'm just starting a layout, I'll have to talk a friend into seeing how many cars this beast can haul. Oh, it has the low speed gearset too, so starting a long train should not be an issue. I wonder how much a Kadee coupler can take...

Wow! That sounds like a massive engine. It helps having a cowl body. The AC4400CW I mentioned has weights everywhere except in the cab (including inside the radiators) but there's only so much that will fit in a hood unit.

I think I read somewhere that a Kadee will withstand the equivalent of 2000 free-rolling freight cars... So I don't think coupler failure will be a problem!

I imagine if locomotives are spaced between the freight cars at regular intervals and the locomotives are all synchronized a 100 car train is just the beginning

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i only have about 100 cars, and they all have different couplers. and even then, i have nowhere near the track space for it.

longest train i've ever put together is 11 amtrak cars and 1 loco, i forget what kind. if i wanted to model the entire lake shore limited, which i do want to do, i figured out it would end up sticking 2 inches off the end of the table. i only have a 12 foot layout. i wish i had a bigger one...

Several years ago at a club run by a bunch of guys from Xerox, the big deal was to occasionally tempt the Gods by running 50 & 60 car trains. The power for these events was always two brass engines.

These sorties into the unknown usually ended up with a hell of a story. Inevitably, the outcome was of unreachable derailments in tunnels, an entire train rolling over on its' side on a curve and dying, or stuff getting broken that nobody wanted to see broken. Unfortunately, lessons and regrets are soon forgotten, even when refreshments were limited to coffee, Pepsi and coffee cake. Perhaps if they had been given a beer, everyone would have been content to sit in "The Ditch" on a stool and watch 20 cars cycle by......

I limit my passenger trains to 14 max, freights (depending on what it is) 25 - 35. I know what happens, I know what they do in the real world, and I don't have to prove anything to anybody.

D/