This weekend I pulled out ALL of my train rolling stock in order to place it into foam padded boxes. My to my surprise, I counted 166! Now, I don't know if this is typical or way over the top. See all my trains here!
I've recently thinned down to under just 200. I'll bet that there are probably some folks who have more than we own! Boxcab E50
The last time I counted I had about 100 completed cars. Since then I have finished about 20 cars. There still about 20 kits sitting on the workbench.
Hey, I have 166 locos, and have pared down the collection a bit over the last year..... I have over 350 freight cars, and maybe 50 passenger cars. Then again, I have a layout with staging and yard capacity of about 300 cars, so I'm not really oversaturated......
I have seen a collection that was well over 1,000 cars. Even the owner didn't know how many he had! Also, he had added Micro-Trains couplers to every car that didn't come with them. I tried to do the math to figure out how much he had spent but it made my head hurt.
Even without a layout, I have over 40 locomotives and 250+ cars. That doesn't include all the projects on the work bench.
I've realized, since starting a large layout, that I've skimped on cars. I have too many locos, and too few cars. I got used to paying $2 or $3 a car in the 1970s; now I'm experiencing sticker shock. But I will get over it in time. If there's $200 woth of DCC locos pulling the train, then $400 worth of cars isn't so shocking.
I'm at about 260 cars and 60 locos. Way too many for my layout and unfortunately I don't have a staging yard for them to all sit on nicely ready for use. I'm trying to figure out a storage system for all the spare trains. My wife is into scrap booking and she has a rollin chest on wheels with slide out drawers. I was thinking of maybe using something like that. In theory that's better than a staging yard because trains sitting in a staging yard will collect dust. I'd like to have a staging yard but right now I don't know where to put it without competely being in the way of our path to the laundry room. Also, going double deck would solve the issue but that scares the crap out of me because now we're talking helix and probably an additional 3 years of work at my pace.
I am afraid to update my inventory.......haven't done it for over five years. N Scale is so ... accumulatable.... if you are "in" N for any period of time your collection will get out of hand.... And I have been selective (not buying post-1960 cars, for example) or the situation would be really extreme. There are MANY carbody types that I do not have any examples of..... Atlas has not helped by bringing out their 40' wood reefers and USRA single sheathed box cars.... Charlie Vlk
Oh, Charlie, ain't that the truth! I just reached 252 cars with the purchase of another Atlas reefer at the Tallahassee show. And that doesn't count the out-of-era AN and ERES cars (4 total)
The rule of thumb is that you should have more lokies than cars. There is no such thing as too many, if the balance is achieved.
I have about a 1 to 10 loco-to-car ratio right now and just from some preliminary calculations that ratio will probably hold pretty well. I figure I'll end up with around 60 locos and 600 cars for my layout when it's all said and done. My current layout with staging will hold about 1/2 of that without getting too crowded.
Be careful about the foam-padded boxes. Back in 1988 I built a number of wooded crates using a green foam insert especially designed for model trains. After some years I found residues of the foam sticking to my engines. The paint is showing slightly the pattern of the foam. So watch what happens to your models. Christoph
