How Long Is Your Longest Train?

don't know how many cars, but on my 8'x 12' train board that I take to shows, I had a continuous train around the entire outside loop. the rear coupler of the caboose coupled with the front coupler of the lead locomotive. so 8+8+12+12= 40feet or close to it.

one lady stood there and watched for about 5 min before she realized there was no end, she says.

"there's no end to this train"

I've got a 4 x 10 in the garage, so . . .  4 (traditional) passenger cars  plus one head end, and 7 cars plus caboose for freights.  Any more than that would just be stoopid.

Pete

I'm still experimenting.  For example, I wanted to test the pulling power of PW type GG1's.  A lash up of 2 GG1's handily hauled a 10 car variety of aluminum 15", 18" and 21" passenger cars.  Adding another GG1 seemed to be of little or no improvement on the toughest grade.  Certain other engines ( not all of them scale ) in the roster handle the same consist quite well all on their own.  But 8-10 passenger cars will probably be the future norm.   With the layout consisting mostly of grades, an inattentive engineer can easily stall during a climb.  EOB, and the likes, allows you to relax a bit.   I have yet to build a freight train of any real length, but I doubt, during normal operations, a drag of that type will be longer than 15-20 cars. 

Bruce

TommyZ has some really long trains. He is a member of this forum.

He's got a bunch more videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TommyZTrains/videos

My dad ran a 75 ft long 70 car PFE reefer train with a Lionel UP 9000 and UP 3985 on the Austin Tinplate Trackers layout at WGH Feb 21/ 22 , 2009 San Antonio TX.  video on youtube as Double Headed reefer  train.  afterwards kept train running with 3 crew and power changes.  A Lionel Big Boy 4006 at half the speed.  A 3rd Rail Big Boy 4024, and a Lionel Allegheny.  Another great day on Austin Tinplate Trackers 3-rail modular railroad!!!!!

**** man, TommyZ has an impressive room and long train runs 

Nobody does it better than Tommy Z 

I had 94 hoppers on this one

And eventually 98 reefers on this one

My longest is about 110 ft.  52 Lionel Autoracks and 3 Legacy CSX SD80MACs (Ignore the video title page.  I can't count!)  I just received another 6 Autoracks so I'll be going for 52 with 4 engines, probably about 125 ft.  

Longest train... Maybe 35 Beeps and 100 cars. I had about 10 beeps at the rear of the train. I belong to a modular group if you want to know

2 TMCC diesels pulling 16 mixed modern freight.  One end of 26' long layout uses 042 curves, so I'm limited to types of motive power and rolling stock.

All the way to the caboose.

Also, the "TommyZ" videos, above: remind me to never buy a used loco from this guy.

My layout is pretty small. Anything more than 4 or so freight cars and a hack or coach for a mixed train wouldn't make any sense. This was taken at my first-ever op session:

A pal of mine has a HO layout that is massive and is now more or less a parking lot for a huge collection of his brass locomotives. I honestly think he might have more power than cars but he once set up a train when he was running it all the time that had about 2 dozen (all brass) locomotives up front and every single freight car he had trailing. It took more than a couple of minutes for it to go by. How he did that in the pre-DCC era without messing up one of the motors, I'll never know.

I do not run very long trains . Usually just 7 or 8 total.

Recently fooling around with the Menards military cars I made this video for the fun of it. It's my longest train ever.

The USMC Alco A B with 19 cars including my home made caboose. It did struggle but it made it.

I first tried it with my WW 11 steam but it could not move , just sit and spin wheels

I had to speed it up at the end to keep the video under 100 meg to post. I really like very slow moving trains actually.

Larry

Still having fun

.

clem k posted:

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

Awww your layout looks awesome! Have you tried contacting Google to try an get it back?

This is starting to sound like a jock contest, "Mine is longer than yours" ...

I run steam on my layout with grades so I limit passenger trains to 5 or 6 cars and freight to 12 to 14 with cabin car.  I usually run local passenger trains of 4 cars and mail with 5.  I like stretches of 9 tank cars with a couple of 2 bay coal hoppers at the rear, a dozen reefers, a dozen mixed box cars, gons, and flats. If I ran diesel power, I would use 2 or 3 F3's to pull 24 cars depending on loco weight and my 2.25% grades.