Large Scale Central

RLD Hobbies open house on Oct. 1st

RLD Hobbies open house on Oct. 1st

Who had the nice long C&NW train there towards the end of the video? That was a pretty log jammed set of tracks. Good to see or hear there were no major oops with all the traffic moving at different directions and speeds!

Also curious what you and most people use to transport that many cars from your vehicle to the layout, are you using just plastic tubs or special made boxes?

Pete Lassen said:

Also curious what you and most people use to transport that many cars from your vehicle to the layout, are you using just plastic tubs or special made boxes?

Your best bet is to NEVER have to carry them anywhere. Things get damaged way too easily - I always envied those guys that had a storage shed or a basement where they could run them out to the mainline.

I never had anything like that, so I devised some special carriers that allowed me to carry 4 cars in each hand. Still a pain and not nearly as good as running them out of the basement. I started with wood carriers and then “evolved” to styrene. You can see what I came up with here: http://jbrr.com/rolling-stock/carrier.html

Every Saturday morning, we set out at least 170 cars, at various location on the railroad, as we actually OPERATE freight trains. We store the cars in "Bread Trays (6 to a tray) and tote boxes about 8 to a box.

We do not transport the cars off the property.

We are not modelling the unit trains of today, where there is no switching, just watching long trains basically running in circles, which does please some people.

The bread trays are held on racks in several storage buildings. The tote boxes are also stacked in small storage buildings. All trays and tote boxes are labelled; indicating where the cars are to be located for the next operation. We use the RailOp program.

If we tried to store the cars on track, and run them out to their locations; it would take up too much trackage; and the OPERATIONS would amount to running them out, then running them back. Too much time would be lost. We put the cars out in about 40 minutes, at the start, and putting them away takes about the same.

Our operations are not interesting to many, but our gang seems to keep coming back, every Saturday morning, weather and season co-operating.

Fred Mills

duplicate deleted

Most trains I see are rolling down tracks, so by OPERATING them, seems like that is a way to OPERATE a railroad. The have to get somewhere first before they can be taken to their destination.

I guess I wasn’t specific enough about the question so I will try again

When you take a lot of cars like Matt and all the others do when he goes to Robbies open house, how do you get the cars there, do you just stack them like cord wood in the car? do you box them back or do you use some kind of bread tray or special type of bin to get them from the house to where ever you are going to OPERATE them. Most trai

Pete, that CN&W train was Fred Tennyson’s son. I can’t think of his name right now, sorry. Fred is the man when it comes to custom painting.

As far as transporting trains…it kinda varies from guy to guy. For me, the engines go in the cab of my truck and the cars go in the bed. I wrap the engines in large towels. This past time I put the coal cars in the cab of my truck too, because I was too lazy to remove the coal loads. I did place towels between each stack of coal cars. Normally I just put the coal cars in the bed of my truck, but I was afraid the coal loads would get blown out of the back of my truck.

Some guys have plastic totes and wrap their cars in a towel. Some guys just wrap their stuff in towels and put it in their vehicle. Some guys have trailers that they keep their stuff in. I’m probably the only one that just let’s them ride in the bed of my truck. hahaha! That being said, all of my rolling stock is missing pieces. I’m not a rivet counter and I run outside all the time. I also have to carry them from my yard barn to the tracks on my layout, which isn’t very far at all, but crap happens. So, I don’t care if they are in the bed of my truck. If a person were to care about scratches, missing pieces, etc…then large totes and wrapping them in towels seems to be the best method from what I’ve seen. Me personally, the only thing I give special care to are my engines.

Thanks Matt, my cars have some missing stirrups and some other parts . Like you I believe in the 10 foot rule, and enjoy my trains . Thanks for the answers! I did see some trailers and everything in between in the video