Road numbers: To model railroaders are they like Pokemon? (ie: Gotta catch 'em all?)

To someone relatively new to Model Railroading I still don't quite grasp the importance of road numbers. Can someone educate me on this?

Is it typically a "goal" to collect everyone that exists?

 

It's an interest in accurately modeling the prototype railroads. In the real world every single locomotive and car has a unique combination of road name and number. The road name indicates the owning railroad and the road number indicates the car or locomotive within that railroad.

The prototype uses these numbers to keep track of where all their cars -- and their associated freight (or passengers) -- are, and for things like maintenance and asset tracking and so forth.

It wouldn't be prototypical for a railroad to have two cars with the same road number, so those modelers who are interested in being prototypical will have an interest in making sure all of their cars have unique road numbers. Modelers who are into operations -- doing the paperwork and "moving freight" around their layouts in a realistic fashion -- will also want unique road numbers for the same reason as the prototype: keeping track of where their freight is.

Some collectors also may use unique road numbers as a way of tracking whether they have collected all of a particular type of car... which I suppose does make them like Pokemon

 

Thanks for the response! Is there a search engine I can type road numbers into to find out who they belong to?

Does the situation differ if for example it is for a demonstrator model? I've seen some demonstrator locomotives with different road numbers.

 

There is a hobby, mainly popular in England, called train spotting where trackside observers try to photograph every example of a particular class of locomotives--every road number in the class. That's not so popular in the U.S. where pulling it off could involve a lot more travel.

As TwinDad said, in the U.S. in particular, where freight cars are pooled to a significant degree, the numbers are important for the paperwork of paying for exchange use. Railroads use each other's cars and charge customers for the use, because if they didn't they'd spend a whole heck of a lot of manhours and fuel hauling empty cars back to the railroads that own them. So, they pay each other rent, and deduct charges for the repairs they do to each other's cars.

The numbers don't mean anything without the other part of the reporting marks--the owners. Each railroad has its own abbreviation, of no more than four letters. In addition, there are companies that aren't railroads but own cars, and collect from the railroads for their use. These have ownership codes that end in X. There are also a few companies that lease locomotives to the railroads, because railroads have traffic peaks (at harvest time, for example). They used to keep reserve power for a while before retiring it, but a locomotive is expensive to keep in running condition while it's sitting. The power lease companies count on different railroads having their harvests and other traffic surges at different times, so they can lease power to northern roads during the October harvest and southern roads during their November harvest, to oversimplify it.

And, yes, every locomotive manufacturer has its own ownership marks too, for demonstrators. They often liked to make the demonstrator locomotive numbers the same as the model number, or horsepower, so sometimes multiple units got a -1, -2, etc. at the end. Otherwise, those are the same as anything else.

Typing the marks you see into your search engine will often get you the information, sometimes without even clicking on any websites. GATX, for example, is discussed on the web often enough, and unique enough, that you'll probably see Great American Tank Lines before you even go to a site that talks about it. But sometimes the letters correspond to something else, like the latest software for something, and you may get to sort through all sorts of things with that acronym before you hit paydirt.

 

I don't care. I don't even care if I have several of the same car with the same road number. It's not important enough for me to worry about. I'd rather have fun running them instead of working on changing the road number in several places on one car.

I like others to do what they want.

Doug

 

And I'd be willing to bet if you had a dollar for every time someone noticed, you'd still be saving up for a cup of coffee, too.

 

Yeah, I don't recall anybody ever coming into the train room and zeroing in on that. In fact, if I were to point it out, most people would say "oh" and that would be it.



Doug

 

I have the whole CN F3A/B (excluding GTW) set, from 9000-9005. And both GP35s, 4000 and 4001. As long as they're a pretty limited series, it's fun to try to bag all of them.

But I definitely won't try doing that with CN's SD40/SD40-2 roster...

 

For collectors, particularly in the smaller scales where collecting doesn't require a warehouse for storage, road numbers are important. It is also important for some folks who like to run trains. In NTRAK it seems to be a mixed bag. In our local club there are at least two guys who run long consists (60+ cars) who don't give a hoot that all their cars have the same road number. Heck - nobody can read them anyways without sticking their nose into the layout.

However, there are a ton of 'accidental' collectors. People who buy a lot of items for their consists but want to be able to sell their collection should money get scarce. These folks know that it is hard to sell 100 of the exact same boxcar to a dealer. These folks therefore like to have different road numbers in their consists.

Then you have real collectors for whom these things are very important. When Micro-Trains (an N/Z Scale manufacturer) makes a new car, the first road number produced is always much more desirable and valuable than later runs.

I, myself, fall into the 'accidental' category. I am a runner, and I only buy things that I intend to put on the tracks. However, I like that every car in my 'collection' is unique. Finding out which road numbers I could still attain and at what price was of concern to me. eBay is always limited to what sellers currently have in stock. It is not a good source for learning what is out there in general.

This was the motivation for me to build the N Scale Database that allows you to punch in a road number and find out who made it. Or you can type in a bunch of search words like 'Central Vermont 40 Foot Boxcar' and get a list of who made what with which road numbers.

ntrains.trovestar.com is the database. There is nothing equivalent for the other scales, though someone started work on an HO database before moving on to something else. The engine works like a wiki so anyone can contribute data (and road numbers) to it.

 

So yes, to many of us it is just like POKEMON.

 

Can any of you explain to me why this has SIX road numbers?

https://www.scaletrains.com/collect...o-gecx-pre-production-field-test-demonstrator

It's a demonstrator model(!) Why so many? And am I just poor or is it a cruel joke? In the back of my head it's as if I can't collect them all in one purchase that somehow I've failed at life.

I will say as an individual purchase MUCH, MUCH, MUCH cheaper than O scale.

 

Regarding this same train ( https://www.scaletrains.com/collect...o-gecx-pre-production-field-test-demonstrator )

There are a total of 7 road numbers, 6 of them I have no idea how they came up with them - whether they rolled dice or what have you. I don't know what they represent.

However the 7th - that being "2015" - this number has been on multiple Demo's from other model train manufacturers. Is this is the "true" beginning road number for this loco that in reality isn't a road number after all but more of a model number or even a model year designation of some sort?

You mention differences between the road numbers but because there aren't photos of each road number how do you know there are differences?

 

On the website, it lists the different number, and the features that come with each one. There are 7 different numbers because there are 7 (or more) demonstrator units. A demonstrator is different from an experimental locomotive. Many demonstrator units can be built, and often end up being purchased by railroads. If they are not sold, they are kept by GE and leased “rented” by other railroads. All 7 of those numbers are on actual trains as well. The numbers are not randomly chosen and painted on the model. 2015 might have been chosen because that is when the trains was designed, but model year is not the meaning of a road number. The other numbers are probably just open slots above 2015. Multiple companies may make a road number, but if you want to be realistic, don’t buy repeat numbers. A road number is like a license plate. It identifies the locomotive or car. No two cars have the same license plate, so your trains shouldn’t either. The companies make more than one number so people can have more than one of the same type of locomotive.


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For a serious collector, getting every road number can be fun. It might be easy to get all of them if the class is small, but for big railroads like Bnsf or Union Pacific, it is impossible to get them all. There are not many SD9s left for BNSF, so that might be an easy collection goal. On the other hand, there are over 1000 ES44 (AC, DC, C4 subclass) locomotives on BNSF. Buying models and painting all those numbers takes an insane amount of money. By no means should you have every locomotive, but you don’t want the exact same number over and over. On a huge layout it might not be noticeable, but if it does not cost you extra to buy a different number, you should get it. Collecting may not be the goal of you hobby. If you want a cool layout, don’t waste your money buying hundreds of locomotives just to say you have them all. Go for quality, not quantity, especially if you are just starting out. I like my few nice locomotives, instead of a pile of junk train show models.


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For myself different road numbers are essential to operations. I operate like the prototype, I even based my switchlists off ones my shortline gave me. It would not work to have duplicates cars. Every car moves for a reason, and I model those movements as accurately as possible.

 

I started paying attention to road numbers a couple of years after jump starting my interest and moving to N scale in 2006. I have a few duplicates because who doesn't love Southern 2-bay hoppers?

I like seeing "my locomotives" in various prototype railroad picture books; LN, SOU, MSTL.

 

If I end up with a duplicate road number on anything, one of them always gets changed. It is an operations thing.
Sometimes if the IRL car is patched, the duplicate will be patched as well.