My in-progress layout is designed to run freights with about 35-45 cars with a caboose and four F units. The locals will be shorter, pulled by a pair of geeps or rs-3's and will vary from a handful of cars up to about 15 or so. Being an early to mid-50's layout, my cars are predominantly 40' box cars, though there is a pretty good mix of everything. My steepest grade is 2% so that is part of the limitation, because the F units could probably pull stumps on the flat parts of the layout. But the other limitation was the length of my arrival and departure tracks in the main yard. That's what pretty much dictated the length of sidings and staging tracks.
Thought I would bump this thread as my bench work is well under way and I am looking forward to running 10' trains with to leading locos and one mid-train.
I run any where from 20 to 75 cars, the longest owns the railroad, no passing sidings long enough to handle them. Bob
My layout is 3x8, (well 4x8 counting the backdrop and lighting) but generally 10-12 box cars +engine tender and caboose, 10-20 coal cars, depending on the engine(s) at the head or 6-10 passenger cars. It may be a while before I can expand the layout, but I am pretty happy with what I am working on now.
Ooops, forgot this: The oval has been extended 8' and will soon be about 40' long. That is, from when the train leaves "Olde Grandure Yard" at one end of the dining room to when it turns the curve at the far end of the living room is about 40'. I'll mostly be running 18ish car unit trains, some mixed freight and an odd ball mix of passenger / bullet and other. The drawing does not show a full double track main that I intend.
There are several aspects to this in my mind. First is...what "looks good". I model several unit trains, and it is more difficult to make them look right than your typical mixed freight. Obviously with a home layout you generally have to make compromises and cannot run 120 car trains like the N-Trak folks do. When designing one of my previous layouts, I was curious what that "sweet spot" would be with regards to the minimum amount of cars that still looked like a unit train. I belonged to a club then and they had plenty of space to handle long trains so I did a little experiment, adding cars (~50ft Atlas Coalveyors) until I felt the proper "look and feel" was there. While this was very informal, I noticed two points where there seemed to be a significant change in the look of the train. The first was 27 cars, and the second was 32 cars. (in general, going over 20 cars also seemed to be significant, although I steel did not get the feel of a unit train at that point) I would say that a good "pike size" modern unit train would be somewhere around 32 50ft cars. I recall counting the cars in a coal drag on Daryl Kruse's old layout and that was the number he had as well and it looked "appropriate". (I'm guessing his new layout has more capacity) Next is "what fits". So, sometimes this is something you design around, while other times your space is so limited that you are simply bound by what results from putting the track down. Right now I'm facing the latter situation, with a fairly small layout that can practically only handle trains with about 16 coal cars. The key limiting factor for me is siding length. For some it might be yard length, or staging, etc. So ideally my sidings would handle 32 coalveyors and 2 SD70MAC's, with a little room to breath.
Currently running trains of 10-12 cars. But the relatively new layout is sectional, with 1-2 sections being added each year. Within the next year or so I should be getting close to the designed-for maximum of about 30-car trains. Jim
On a routine day, I run trains that fit in my passing sidings, but at least twice daily I run a longer train. I run prox 12 cars either mixed or matching, but match era, general geographical area and cars suiting my layout industries. As for passenger cars, I tend to run matching trains, but retain functionality of its intention on the run, so to speak so the length can run anywhere from 8 to 14 passenger cars to make sure it can cook, clean, sit, deliver mail and baggage, and sleep a host of passengers. I also run a commuter line with a push pull loco and 3 cars, just like our TriRail down here in SoFla. When I belonged to the local club, it had a 40' x 5' n layout and to keep up with the locoal guys running long trains , would duouble up on my Kato or Atlas 6 axle diesels and pull up to 80-85 cars. It took so darn long to rail them and take them down for the next guy, but on slower nights it was a HOOT. Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
Depends on the mood Depends on the mood I'm in. If I want to run operations then my trains are 4-6 cars with 1 gp. The layout is set as a urban setting with 3 local runs working out of the yard. If I want to watch the trains go round and round then 10 -15 with as many locos as I feel is needed. I have run 25 with mid train helpers.
As others have said, it seems to depends greatly on each layout. There are no grades on my layout. The locals run with a max of 15 cars, 2 locos and a crummy. I came up with this when I laid out my two sidings and what I determined due to maximum generated traffic per session. So far this has worked out pretty good. The four manifests that feed the locals I have capped at 18-20 cars, two to three locos and a crummy. I based this on my arrival/departure track at the mid point yard where the locals originate. Any through trains have a limit of 25 - 30 cars, two to three locos and a crummy. There is one large passing siding that these will fit in, it's also in the mid point yard.
