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+--- Thread: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train (/showthread.php?tid=3240)
Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - conrailmike - 10-04-2010
This layout is in an old grocery store, it's a big space even for O scale....I can just imagine what a layout in HO scale would look like in this amount of space.
That's a lot of freight cars to be pulling....
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Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - rrinker - 10-04-2010
I always thought about doing that - getting in an empty grocery store and starting a model railroad club. But then I'd need to find a) a lot of money and b) a bunch of people who wanted to build what I wanted to build. I have the same thought pretty much any time I pass a large empty storefront.
--Randy
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - tetters - 10-04-2010
I never thought a model train could 1,400 lbs! Wow!
hock:
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - ngauger - 10-04-2010
rrinker Wrote:I always thought about doing that - getting in an empty grocery store and starting a model railroad club. But then I'd need to find a) a lot of money and b) a bunch of people who wanted to build what I wanted to build. I have the same thought pretty much any time I pass a large empty storefront.I have too.... Lots of empty (unfortunatly) store fronts here... but as you say - no money.. No colateral for a business loan... no knowledge of who could join in with me on the endeavor...
--Randy
I think about doing northlandz in "G" gauge -- it would be So Cool!!!!!
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Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - nachoman - 10-04-2010
I am pretty sure I have seen 200 car trains on an N scale layout before. The longest HO train I have seen was probably around 60 cars. These trains were on modular club layouts set up at train shows. The longest I have personally run successfully was probably only about 20 cars, limited by having a small layout. Once you get over a certain length, you risk damaging stuff like locomotives and couplers. From the article, it sounds like this wasn't an easy feat, and locomotives and cars were damaged in the attempt. I wonder what the total electrical current draw was for this train. I would estimate 30-40 amps.
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - Sumpter250 - 10-04-2010
ngauger Wrote:I think about doing northlandz in "G" gauge -- it would be So Cool!!!!!
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Upscaling Northlandz to G scale would take more than one empty storefront !!!.......maybe an abandoned Kmart, with several stories added......an O scale train 1112.06 feet long....this would be a prototype train....10.109636 MILES long, and would take twenty minutes to clear a grade crossing, if it were traveling at thirty MPH.
Oh,......in G scale, the train would be just short of a half mile.( 2372.3946 feet )
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - rrinker - 10-04-2010
60 cars? pfffft. We ran over 100 coal hoppers on the RCT&HS modular at the last Strasburg show - one of the few venues where we can put up the entire thing. Didn't run it for long, it kept others in the hole too long and they were getting peeved.
--Randy
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - ocalicreek - 10-04-2010
To me it raises a question - does the viewing public want to see long trains, or is it too much like watching a train at a grade crossing? (Reminder: this is not viewed as a good thing by most folks not bent like we are here on this forum).
Galen
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - rrinker - 10-04-2010
Non-train people seem to like to see anything not prototypical. When the long train was running, kids would stand there and count every car. Most people didn;t care that we were using radios to get clearances from the dispatcher. Attenton grabbers were trains like the high/wide train, which was part prototypical (large bridge girders - an actual Reading train carried these for a bridge that still stands today) mixed with some other stuff - a couple of large tanks that didn't go with the bridge girders, or any anything with a sound loco. Switching the yard? The only people who stood around and watched that were train buffs. General public walked right on buy and barely noticed the switcher moving around - might not have even seen it! Since this display was at the RR Museum of PA< across the street from the Strasburg Railroad, one member had a Strasburg train that got a lot of attention, particularly from kids pointing out that it was the train they had just ridden.
--Randy
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - ngauger - 10-04-2010
Yeah Randy --- I learned that real quick when I was volunteering there... The "kids" liked the odd-ball stuff.. the enthusiasts liked the switching problems we gave them on the G gauge layout.. and there were actually a few that bridged the 2 extremes.... but not very many..
Made for interesting days, especially when we got a real train nut and after taking them through a half hour program, we got a person who pretty much was bored with the "detail of every day work" on the railroads.... Like signals, radioing for clearances, and the infamous "switching cars on and off industry sidings"
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - Ralph - 10-04-2010
I observed something similar at a recent Twin Cites show. Sometimes the guys running the layout must assume that spectators will be more interested in the novel or non-train related stuff. I was admiring a grain elevator scene on a modular layout that was on display when I was invited to take the controls that fired missiles from a flat car as it rolled by a bunker that "exploded" if the missile hit it. It was fun but I really just wanted to look at the grain elevator.
Ralph
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - eightyeightfan1 - 10-05-2010
nachoman Wrote:The longest I have personally run successfully was probably only about 20 cars, limited by having a small layout.
The most I personally ran was 29, which included two Auto-Maxxes(Would of my 5 car deep wells be counted as one? As well as my Impacts?) which took both my SD70's, 1 C44-9W, an SD-35 and a GP-35. And you all are right. It went around once, then the Bachmann EZ Mate(Newer Athearn I hadn't converted to KD) couplers started to pull out of the boxes, one of them on one of the Auto Maxx actually broke off at the shank, (All the KD's were still intact and holding).
I did record the event on video, when I find it I'll post it.
Re: Chi-Town Pulls Record Length O-Scale Train - Sumpter250 - 10-06-2010
The longest train I've ever run was when I was still building "modern". It was an SD50,SD60, and SD40-2 ( C&NW ) pulling 70' of autoracks, 4-truck tank cars, Hi-cube box cars, and an eighty foot by twelve foot "I" beam on a flat with idlers ahead and behind.
The second longest was 40' of reefers behind my Clinchfield Challenger.
Modular layouts can make these long trains possible.