If you have your momentum turned off and it still takes more than one lap to stop, your train might be too long.
If you have to get permission from more than two yardmasters to make a runaround move, your train might be too long.
If you need more than two throttles to program all the locos in your consist and it still takes a shove from the yard switcher to get moving, your train might be too long.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
If the yard consumed all availible man power, the entire work day and refueled the switchers a number of times; the train may be too long.
Best to build these long trains during holiday periods when all of Dispatch and Higher are on vacation somewhere sunny so they dont stress too much.
If your locos are in your basment and your caboose is still back at the hobby store, your train might be too long.
Craig
DMW
When you are heading down a grade with full reverse and gaining speed then your train might be too long.
When you stall going up a grade and the weight of your train drags you back to the start of the grade, then your train might be too long.
When double-headed Garratts cannot move the train on level track, then your train might be too long.
When your seven loco diesel lash up with over 27000Hp cannot shift the consist, then your train might be too long.
When the automatic signalling goes from red to amber and then to green and the brake van is still in the green section, then your train is too long.
Army National Guard E3MOS 91BI have multiple scales nowZ, N, HO, O, and G.
You know your train is to long when:
-The tail end starts to move several minutes after the head end (coupler slack)
-When all other club members have to operate helpers
-You have to momentarily apply full throttle when starting, so you can determine by sound if the locomotives have stalled on dirty track
-Someone else warns you that your train has derailed about 37 cars back from the mid-helper
-You string line your consist - on a grade, not a curve
-The rule book states backing the train is not permitted - period
-The brakeman takes one look at the consist, and goes home
-The driver traction tires peel off on starting
-If the room lights fade when you apply throttle
-You can feel the weight of the train through the vibration in the floor
-The 36 hours you spent on working automatic crossing gates, lights, detectors, etc... was a pure waste of time - they just stay down anyway
-The talking hot box detector curses at you
Wait, One More
-Your locomotive scratch building and detailing material list includes concrete, lead, cast iron, uranium 236, old Chevy 454 engine blocks, industrial motors from Baldor, Westinghouse, and General Electric , and Preiser sumu wrestler figures for the crew
As you advance the throttle on the struggling locomotives, your phone rings to inform you that your power usage is gaining on the Utility's ability to supply it.
Another would be the use of 6x6 or 8x8 Oak benchwork under your track.
You stop some feet away from the signal so that the run-in of the slack does not push you past the Absolute stop signal.
Visitors fall asleep counting cars as they pass.
Your Rolling Stock money value far exceeds any possible revenue for the entire train.
You install Cog Gearing in the middle of the track and equipt your locos with very large motors to drive the gear.
Finally, you arrive in the outermost town on the railroad while the dispatcher waits paitently for the Yard Tower to call in your departure.
I'm having too much fun with this -
You know your train is too long when:
-Your yard goats are Big Boys, Cab-Forwards, C-8's, Y6b's, R-2's, and Z-5's, in pairs!
-Microsoft Train Simulator won't run your train without freezing, even on "Deep Blue", the super computer
-Union Pacific put in an order for freight locomotives like the ones they saw at your layout open house
Alex
-If one of your layout's admirers hands you a business card from the Guiness Book of World Records, your train might be too long.
-If the lead locomotive is the one Richard Trevithick built in 1804 and the current mid-helper is a GE ES44AC, then your train might be too long.
-If you're sending out helper calls to local subway systems, commuter rails, train museums, tourist railroads, and railroad scrapyards, your train may be too long.
-If old locomotives are being restored just to help your train, your train may be too long.
-If the tension in the couplers is so great that when one breaks the lead locomotives catapult forward like a fighter jet launching from an aircraft carrier, your train may be too long.
If you have to dual gauge your z-scale model train layout with real standard gauge so the real UP 3985 can pull your train, then your train might be just about long enough.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Dave
Just be glad you don't have to press "2" for English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_ALEdDUB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hqFS1GZL4s
http://s73.photobucket.com/user/steemtrayn/media/MovingcoalontheDCM.mp4.html?sort=3&o=27
If your running your train in the basement but the layout is on the 2nd floor, your train is too long.
Your train is too long when you have to rethink your railroad name Mississippi Short Line.
Your train may be too long when the dispatcher clears the main from Chicago to New York.
`
If doubleheaded M-4 2-8-8-4 Yellowstones and a mid-train helper of a Rio Grande L-131 2-8-8-2 just whine and spin their drivers, then your train is not only TOO long, but your layout just collapsed!
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
It might be time for Digitrax to market 100 foot wind turbines and call it "Uberfan Model Power Supply" or solar panels for your roof.
After repeated problems with power; running these long trains.
Another hint that your train is too long is when you contort and bend at wild angles to get inside your helix and start pulling every peice of it out to find the locomotive.
If a Kadee #5 snaps, your train might be too long.
If your consist requires more engines than your DCC system can support, your train might be too long.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Beyer-Garratt 6040 wrote: When you stall going up a grade and the weight of your train drags you back to the start of the grade, then your train might be too long.
Nope. BTDT. You have a piece of ballast stuck in the running gear of your 2-6-2 Prairie on a 2.5% grade.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
If your lead engine is 4 time zones ahead of the mid train helpers.
CHUCK
If it is as long as the Elliots' Trackside Diner thread... your train might be too long!
George
"And the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers ride their father's magic carpet made of steel..."
nscaler711 wrote:it might be too long if you cant tell the back from the front or the front from the back
I have several trains that meet that specification - DMU and EMU sets. The longest runs with five (or six when I add the diner) cars...
And none of them are too long for the high platforms at Tomikawa...
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
If you model in Hugely Oversize scale, you're train is too long no matter what, your industrial buildings too small, and your mountains are but mole hills!!
If you're running Nice scale Life Like FA's in a trio, your train CANT be too long!
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
If your main line is completely occupied, you have a continuous chain of cars from the train table to the carpet, and the locomotive is moving through the aisle, you train may be too long.
If the little plastic guys waiting at the crossing get hungry, order pizza, it is delivered, and the delivery guy eats it himself because it was getting cold while he figures out how to get to the customers on the other side of the tracks, your train is too long.
If somebody waiting at the crossing gets out of his car, crosses over the pedestrian bridge, and walks to work, your train is too long.
If all your customers are complaining that they have no more cars on-site and nobody can promise them new ones anytime soon, your train is too long.
If you are gaining seniority faster than the train is moving away from the depot, your train is too long.
If the fishermen by the pond have enough time to catch a fish, cook it, and tell their friends about the one that got away, and the train is STILL going by, your train may be too long.
If the engineer saw the coin toss for a football game, and the conductor was too late for the last whistle being blown, your train may be too long.
If EVERY other railroad is calling your management to complain about the blocked grade crossings, your train may be too long.
If, operating on the staff-and-ticket system, the ticket has been delivered to the agent at the destination station and your brake van still hasn't passed the start signal at your station of origin, either your train is too long or the distance between stations is too short.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - staff-and-ticket on the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo)