We broke the world record!... For the worlds longest model train. In April the members of the Wilmington Model Railroad Museum in Wilmington, NC broke the world record for the worlds longest model train. The record was previously held by Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany. Our train consisted of 1,563 HO scale cars pulled by 31 bowser engines. Our track was laid in an double-oval measuring 1002 linear feet. The train, which weighed 427 pounds and measured 925.5 feet long, traveled 750 feet without stopping. It took us 21 tries. Each time the train separated or a car derailed, we had to start all over again from zero. We started pulling at 1 PM and the lead loco passed the finish line at 3:50 PM. Model railroader magazine has the trailer listed in Model Railroader's video web site. Have a look at User Videos - Model Railroader Magazine and scroll down to "Going the Distance: Railroad to a Record" and have a look.
Try this one instead. For some reason MRR wants you to create an account. Trailer - Going the Distance
Congrats on the record! Would have liked to have seen more of the actual train on the video with info on what kind of engines were used, how much power it took to run it, specific problems encountered and how you overcame them, etc. You know, the interesting stuff...:tb-err:
Congratulations! Must have been a lot of tweaking to get everything just right for an attempt. Boxcab E50
Well I can answer any specific questions you have. We used Bowser C-630 locomotives with no alterations other than a strip of steel on the walkways on each side. We did this to make each locomotive weight one pound, so we had 31 pounds of locomotive pulling. We experimented for several weeks and found this to be the optimal weight for the best weight/traction ratio for these particular locomotives. The lead locomotive had some blinking LEDs on it as you can see in the photo to make it easier to locate the head of the train. Each freight car was weighted according to the NMRA RP. The locomotives were not spaced out evenly throughout the train, we spaced then so that each loco was pulling the same amount of weight, not the same number of cars. So we had a loco every 30-50 cars in the train. We powered our train with an MRC "Power G" transformer that put out 10 amps, and we used it all. Afterwards we decided that if we were to do this again, we would split the track into two blocks and use two transformer. The engineer felt the locos would have run better with a little more power available. The main problem we encountered was separations and derailments. We had "spare" cars on hand. When a car derailed it was marked with a piece of masking tape on top. If it turned out to be a "problem child" we snatched it out of the consist and replaced it with one of the spares. The cars had Kadee style couplers and bowser's knuckle couplers. Separations were a big problem. Even though they are metal, the kadee's still werent designed to pull a 450 pound train. We solved this by building some rings cut from brass tubing. The rings were grooved on each side and they slid down over the knuckles, making it impossible for them to separate. This is allowed by Guinness - modification to the couplers are permissible so long as the modification doesn't increase the distance between the cars (making your train artificially longer). I have actual photos on my website that I personally took. http://www.JonesAnthony.com (click on the purple Wilmington RR Museum banner middle of the page). If you have any specific questions, just ask.
Thanks for the response and the link - that was an amazing undertaking. I do have a question - I'm assuming the locos were DC? Just thinking that to keep a train like that together they would have to be pretty well speed matched. Sorry for the ignorance but that whole concept of a train like that is mind-boggling.
Congrats! We visited the Wilmington museum for the first time last week. My wife and I enjoyed the model train layout. That was a fun museum overall. We noticed the world record bragging in the gift shop. Thanks for explaining how it worked. Congrats to all.
