# World's Longest G Scale Train with 1 locomotive



## Chata86 (Dec 5, 2010)

Amazing. How can this be?
One locomotive and over 150 carts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhQMqKl38wU


I guess that BigBoy loco is very powerful! Where you come up with 150+ carts and the those ball bearing wheels for them - I don't know. Sheesh, if the wheels are $6 each and the carts $100 each, that's $15k in carts and $2k in wheels!


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## silverstatespecialties (Jan 2, 2008)

WOW 

Think of the strain on the first several dozen of couplers, pulling all that weight.... 

If that isn't an effective sales ad for the USAT BigBoy, then I don't know what is!!!


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

Yep Dennis has a very impressive RR out in Arizona. He can well afford to build the trains. I' have been to his layout and seen all the trains that he has. Later RJD


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## livesteam53 (Jan 4, 2008)

Thanks for posting. 
Dennis told me he was going to try this and guess he did. 
The Big Boy has the weight and enough motor power to do this. 
Ball bearings wheels are what really helps. I can pull 3 times as many cars with my C21 when I have ball bearing wheels on the cars.


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## Nicholas Savatgy (Dec 17, 2008)

Posted By livesteam53 on 11 Dec 2010 07:17 PM 
Thanks for posting. 
Dennis told me he was going to try this and guess he did. 
The Big Boy has the weight and enough motor power to do this. 
Ball bearings wheels are what really helps. I can pull 3 times as many cars with my C21 when I have ball bearing wheels on the cars. 
Of course it can.

Its the end all of be all locomotives..............

USA all the way...........


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## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

and enough motor power to do this 
Yeah - whenv I saw the Big Boy I wondered why the topic heading was ".. with 1 locomotive." That's two, whichever way you slice it!


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## Dan Pantages (Jan 2, 2008)

I'm surprised it doesn’t string-line. That last shot of the diesels pulling it looks to be about a 4ft radius curve.


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## BodsRailRoad (Jul 26, 2008)

It would be interesting to find out what the Actual draw weight is because the 400+ pounds is incorrect since the cars are on wheels and not dead weight.

I would also like to see how many Dash 9's it would acutally take to pull the train as well, I'm guessing 2 when properly weighted.

Ron


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## Ironton (Jan 2, 2008)

Pete,

It is just semantics I know, but...

The title is just one locomotive. The big boy is just one locomotive. That locomotive has 4 engines which is twice as many as usual, but is still only one locomotimve.


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## Pete Chimney (Jan 12, 2008)

Rick

My understaing is each set of paired drivers (in this case 4 wheels on each side of the locomotive or 8 drivers) is considered one engine. This means a Big Boy, at 4-8-8-4, is consideed ot have TWO engines, not four.


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## Ironton (Jan 2, 2008)

Pete,

An old hostler once told me, perhaps in jest, that each side was considered an engine. A locomotive could limp along with only one side working, and there are many stories of this happening.

So a consolidation would have two engines while a mallet would have four by this rule. Just going by what and experienced guy said.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Unless you are talking live steam... it's one loco, one engine, one electrical motor yes?









Rich, I think you were jested... the axles unite the engine(s) so while a V-8 has two banks of cylinders, the crank (axles) unites them as on engine. While they could run (limp) along at half power, half of the wheels did not stop turning.... thus the entire front bogie is an engine w/ 2 cylinders. 

Well that's this old fart's opinion.









John


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## Pterosaur (May 6, 2008)

An academic excercise only. I highly doubt any real railroad anywhere counted their Big Boys as two or four engines on their rosters.


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

Coming off the old KP line into the Wye in Denver, and then going "north" onto the Greeley sub takes coal trains through an almost 180 degree turn, and you can literally stand between the curves and watch the train go both directions at once! That, along with the Big Ten curves west of Denver really make you wonder why the trains don't pull off the track sideways. But if you think about it, each car isn't being pulled by the locomotive, but by the car in front of it, an almost straight through pull. Still, if something derails or hangs up, there's still going to be a sideways pull that is going to take the train off the track... 

Railroads, even model ones, work with some pretty amazing physics! 

Robert


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## Chata86 (Dec 5, 2010)

The thread title "one loco" was just a copy of the YouTube title. Trust me, I don't know enough about it to make any judgements about the loco.  

Do all the carts really weigh 400 pounds? 

Is everyone really into these USA trains now, not LGB?


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## Kovacjr (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is a video of my Accucraft K28 live steam pulling somewhere 52 cars. Accucraft cattle cars weigh about 3.7 lbs each about 16 of them had ball bearings but the rest were just frest from the cases and never even oiled. The caboose of the typical accucraft brass lead sled.



For comparison here is me behind the same loco. I am about 170lbs


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## Chata86 (Dec 5, 2010)

Fabulous. Anyone in Colorado with live steam or otherwise G Scale?


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## rdamurphy (Jan 3, 2008)

Check out the Garden Railroad Club at the Colorado Railroad Museum. They have live steam from 1:20.3 up to 1:1 scale! 

Robert


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## tacfoley (Jan 3, 2008)

Back around 2002 when AristoCraft announced their first six-axle diesel, the SD45, they had a track at the Queen Mary show with a hundred cars being hauled by a single SD45. Even posted it on the AristoCraft forum, too, as I recall. 

tac 
www.ovgrs.org 
Supporter of the Cape Meares Lighthouse Restoration Fund


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