i have 220 and about 30 still in boxes yet to be built*( ready to run is depressing and has slowed down my car buying!!!!) my last layout was able to hold all of my cars. hopefully my next will be able.
if you think you have to many cars i will glady take them off your layout.
too much is never enough
"Dispatcher to the extra 41 south. Pull up to the signal, and take a number, gentlemen. Gonna have to hold you out there a while. The yard is plugged, and this guy keeps buying more stuff"!
hobo9941 wrote:"Dispatcher to the extra 41 south. Pull up to the signal, and take a number, gentlemen. Gonna have to hold you out there a while. The yard is plugged, and this guy keeps buying more stuff"!
Don't laugh; I heard one similar the other day while working on the layout. As I mentioned in another thread, when I work on the layout I have one of my ham rigs on and scanning the train freqs. Come's this conversation from the local intermodal yard over in Pennsy:
Yardmaster to ground crew:
"We have another train coming in that has to clear the main."
Listening during the day it seems they've been VERY busy.
Yardmaster to dispatcher:
"We have no room here to put more containers at the moment. We're only allowed to stack the containers so high."
Dispatcher to yardmaster:
"I don't care. Stack them 3 high, 4 high, shove 'em up your (insert 3 letter word for posterior here which was what exactly came over the air) I don't care. Just unload the train!"
de N2MPU Jack
Proud NRA Life Member and supporter of the 2nd. Amendment
God, guns, and rock and roll!
Modeling the NYC/NYNH&H in HO and CPRail/D&H in N
You'd be surprised how often those little excerpts slip out.
Was at work a few months ago, and had a car go on the ground on a slightly elevated track (the ground is raised up about 3 feet to accomodate for a grade). The wheels started making their way to the edge and about the only thing I said was "Oh shoot dump the funking air!"
Was not fun, especially riding the side of the car that was going to the edge.
This space reserved for SpaceMouse's future presidential candidacy advertisements
Since I've been collecting for about 30 years, I have somewhere between 500-600 pieces. All with Kadees and most with metal wheels. Many are also weighted to NMRA specs as well and I have a good amount of the collection custom painted by myself also. Most everything is weathered too.
QChugger
I have about 40 hopper cars and 4 boxcars at the moment, all N scale....somehow, however, i have 15 vanderbilt tenders....and 6 locomotives.
B&O engines need vandy tenders...but i wasnt aware I had so many. How do they DO that?
Tim
I have slowed down, went 6 weeks before I bought any new rolling stock!
Down to 6 steam engines, all BLI or PCM. Sold off the Bachmann.
Covred hoppers, 30 or so Old Dutch Hoppers and 6 Athearns so around 36.
Coal cars, mix of Athearn and Silver Line Bachmann and a few Tyco's 45 to 50.
50 foot Box Cars, mix of reffers, D/D and Singel door, around 60 that I am pulling now.
Gondals, 13 Athean and 5 Tyco / Bachman so 18.
Tank cars, 40 foot apx 7, 74 foot, 9 for a total of 16.
I could go on, but why? Most people eyes glazes over before they read all the answers.
Bottom line, with engines and rolling stock apx 320 in 3 years.
I hate Rust
Too much that I don't want to count and figure out how much I really spent on all this stuff. But they're such cool cars. And dagnabit...walthers had to come out now (for October) with some spine cars and 61 woodchip hoppers in NS and CSX (August). When will it end????!!!!
Hi Everyone,
i've been collecting on and off for the last 50 years, i have 270 frieght cars 15 military cars, and 25 passenger cars, on top of that i have 45 steam engines all running and 7 diesel engines, i have the orginal new haven cars that came with my first train set, it came with a diesel, but traded it for two 0-6-0 steam engines, STEAM RULES!!!!!!, my steam engines vary from 0-4-0's to the big boy's, my favorite kits are the triple crown railroaders, have 6 of them. Keep them roll'in on the high irons.
steam618lover1
I'm up to about 375 counting MOW and cabeese, about 130 of them are coal hoppers. There's about 20 or so cars that don't run on the layout due to clearance issues (85' high cubes and auto racks) but when the layout is done and the Connellsville sub is tied directly into staging, they'll be right at home.
Since I'm also modeling the Thomas Sub of the WM as part of the design, the hopper fleet will balloon up to about 200... then there's the extension into the next room after my son graduates... I'll need a few more trains to run out there, too!
8 tracks of staging at roughly 18 cars each... that's what, 144 cars before you even get to the layout!
While the count is relatively high, every car will eventually have a home on the layout. Since it's N scale, there will actually be room for them all!
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
Total (HO) around 1,450 -- locos, cars, etc. -- no expensive "brass", almost entirely cheeper "plastic". (After it's painted all ya see is the paint !!)
Been collecting since 1946 = about two per month.
Many are "souvenirs". When business took me to Seattle I brought back a S&NC boxcar, another time a SP&S boxcar. From Boston: BAR, B&M, etc. Much cheaper than a speeding ticket and far longer lasting that a few rounds in the bar.
Some are special in their own way, as: Gorre & Daphetid (thanks, MDC). There's others.
Many more "just because". CB&Q cuz as a kid I lived near their tracks. PRR & NYC cuz they were my dad's favorites. UP and EJ&E in rememberance of a life-long buddy who has gone before.
It's called "collecting". And each and every car and locomotive in my collection is there for a good reason. My reason. And they don't have to be out on a layout to be enjoyed. I once knew a guy who lined the walls of his basement with narrow display shelves - one HO car deep. And on those shelves he put his collection -- floor to ceiling. Thousands of cars. And if that's how you want to enjoy your collection, who needs a layout ??? And who's to call him wrong ?????
My layout holds maybe 200. Unless the prototype is a very unusual "captive" situation, such as the East Broad Top, or one of the iron ore roads, the cars are never the same. Most railroad yards can hold only so many cars & railroads don't make much money by storing cars. They're always changing. My huge backlog of equipment allows me to follow common prototype practice by changing equipment. Which I don't do often enough -- but I can.
Some model railroads have staging yards which -- among other things, hold extra equipment. I've got some eighty banker's boxes that serve a similar function. They hold the extra equipment. My collection.
I rather feel sorry for those whose model railroad collections are so devoid of meaning that they can be peddled off like just so many empty beer cans. There's so much more to life -- and model railroading -- than empty beer cans.
Let's see...
Dividing up the rolling stock that is considered suitable for club duty with the ulterior motive of moving some boxes OUT of that one corner to make room for other boxes...
Come to think on it, Ive about 20 peices on order. Durn those pre-arrival product announcements!
About 80 HO cars from over the years and 40 more N scale that I am working in now.
Don't have room on the lay out for all of them so they are stored in trays under the layout.
Lay out is just 2x 8 Will add large freight yard some day
According to my Excel spreadsheet, which may not be totally up-to-date, there are about 30 locomotives, 300 freight cars, 50 deLuxe RoadRailers, 16 Passenger Cars. These are all in N Scale, which I began collecting 10 years ago. Most of these fit the era of my still planned 1989 Northern Vermont layout centered around Richford, VT (where the CP and CN's CV subsidiary interchanged). I suspect that when I finally build the layout, I'll have far more equipment than could fit on the tracks. However, I plan on using a car card / waybill system that will cycle equipment onto and off of the layout. Much of the equipment, such as the passenger cars & roadrailers, will simply pass through the layout from Montrol staging to the layout's Richford to the Newport, VT staging. Although there are some cars purchased because I simply liked them, like the roadrailers and the passenger cars (passenger traffic on the route died in the 60s but my layout assumes that Amtrak brought the Boston-Montrol route back), I generally buy cars that can specifically service planned industries on the layout. Richford has a large Pet Food Feed plant and a number of furniture makers. Newport has a Wood Pulp facility. The CV Richford branch has a Paper Mill at Sheldon Springs, VT. My layout assumes that the State of Vermont funded the rebuilding of the bridge spanning the Missisquoi River at Sheldon Junction after the 1984 derailment so that the Richford branch is still functioning. 1989 was chosen because Amtrak resumed the Montroler in the summer of that year.
I still have a lot of HO rolling stock for my planned CV layout which I gave up on when I realized that I could never fit what I wanted (north half of CV, CV Richford branch, & the SJL) in to my basement so I switched to N and narrowed the focus to a portion of the CV Richford branch and the CP mainline through Richford.
Hi!
I've had an 11x15 HO layout for sometime, but have been accumulating cars/locos far in excess of what I will use. I had inventoried over 500 freight cars (about 1/2 still in kit form) 60 plus passenger cars, and 53 locos at the height a couple of years ago. I had gone thru a number of upgrading sessions (sell the old, buy new) and ended up with a nice selection of transition era ATSF & IC stock.
But then it hit me, I was collecting stuff I would never use and as I'm 64 the possibility of getting a bigger layout is minimal. So, I ebayed off a lot of non-essential stuff - but only lowered the freight car count by 100 or so (to just under 400).
As the layout only holds 125 comfortably, I still have some major thinning out to do.
But I confess, I sure don't look forward to parting with anymore.
Mobilman44
ENJOY !
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Russell
Well I guestimated, and came close at 300, but after actually getting a calculator out to add up the total apparently at the moment I have 307 freight cars, which includes 269 built and 38 kits still yet to be built.
Of these... 12 are custom painted for Southern, and one of those custom cars is a kitbashed "sand" hopper made by chopping down a coal hopper, removing some of the middle panels, and shorteneing the underframe, then piecing the shortened halves back together (it's still slightly longer than the prototype, but at the time it was the best I could do, and it actually looks pretty decent). The rest are either kits or RTR equipment, by various companies.
Some of the most notable would be my 50 car unit coal train for Southern, where I acquired 50 MDC Ortner hoppers over the years and changed the numbers to make them all not only different, but also match actual numbers I have seen roll through the town I used to live in years ago.
<>The biggest part of my inventory of built/RTR cars includes 54 box cars, 73 covered hoppers, 41 tank cars and 78 open top hoppers. Then there are a few handful lots, 3 reefers, 6 gons, 7 coil steel, and 4 flats. These numbers do not reflect the kits yet to be built.
Since you didn't ask about Engines, I didn't include those...but I have about 20 or so, and currently have about a dozen on order from the hobby shop (two of which I wonder if they are EVER coming out...Broadway Limited SD40-2's in Southern...which were supposed to come out last year, but now show to be coming out next year...and for all I know may never come out).
I also have about 20-25 more freight cars on order, not to mention I'm on a waiting list for some out of production cars, should they happen to show up at my favorite model RR shop.
According to my last inventory count on my computer program, I only have 282 pieces of rolling stock-including passenger cars. Most are ATSF and any parent/predecessor railroad thereof, followed by the UP merger families, then a ecclectic collection of any road name I can find, the more obscure the better. I have enough room to double that number and at the rate I'm going, it'll happen.
A good friend of mine in Sacramento told me one time "you never have enough trains". Despite the pleas from my lovely wife of 38 years, these are the words I live by.
I'm intrigued by the sizes of some collections of rolling stock, so I thought I better check the Rolling Stock Register of the V&EP Rwy. Seems like there's about 450 freight cars and 30 passenger cars as well as about 45 locomotives (nearly all steam), and it's still growing.
While this may seem a large number, I was given my first train set at 3 years of age (still have the first set in a box) and moved to American prototype in 1970. So in 38 years, the number of US freight cars has grown on the basis of an average of about one car per month - so this hasn't involved a major outlay or expense at any one time. And unlike other guys who waste their money at the racetrack or in a pub (i.e. bar), I go into the train room and see my collection at any time.
Although some of the earlier choices don't fit the criteria, I've concentrated on freight cars that would have been operating in the early 1950s, with about 20% in V&EP (home road) and about 50% being the connecting roads of SP, WP & GN.
I should also add that I also have some Victorian Railways (my local Australian prototype) models - about 100 wagons and 21 locomotives.
jbinkley60 wrote: Texas Zepher wrote:The scarryness continues. Since the last time this thread surfaced to page 1 of the forum, I've aquired 16 more freight cars. I just couldn't resist Intermountain cars for $12 each at that sale I mentioned.Yep, I am +13 since the thread began with the WGH show in Louisville this weekend....
Texas Zepher wrote:The scarryness continues. Since the last time this thread surfaced to page 1 of the forum, I've aquired 16 more freight cars. I just couldn't resist Intermountain cars for $12 each at that sale I mentioned.
Yep, I am +13 since the thread began with the WGH show in Louisville this weekend....
The show generated 7 more to take me over the 300 mark. So +20 since the thread began. I did go to my favorite LHS yesterday and came home empty handed. That is a rare happening.
Engineer Jeff NS Nut Visit my layout at: http://www.thebinks.com/trains/
My freight car roster is currently around 210 give or take a few. My current layout can't hold all of the cars at once, so I cycle them on and off according to my car card/scenario card system. Some cars, however, like my coal hoppers, and pink BreastCancer car, have permanent residence on the layout.
Even though I rarely run them, I have 20 passenger cars. And two RDC's that I run a lot.
I have 20 locomotives and 12 cabooses, to "move the freight"
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
jbinkley60 wrote: jbinkley60 wrote: Texas Zepher wrote:The scarryness continues. Since the last time this thread surfaced to page 1 of the forum, I've aquired 16 more freight cars. I just couldn't resist Intermountain cars for $12 each at that sale I mentioned.Yep, I am +13 since the thread began with the WGH show in Louisville this weekend....The show generated 7 more to take me over the 300 mark. So +20 since the thread began. I did go to my favorite LHS yesterday and came home empty handed. That is a rare happening.
I am still way under caboosed......