Do you keep ll your locomotives and rolling stock ON your layout?


On my last layout I had as much motive power and rolling stock on my layout as I could fit. When not on my layout my stuff is stored in their original boxes for storage.

Justin
 
Yes, except that rolling stock which has been moved to storage.
 
I don't have room for everything on the layout right now, so excess stuff goes on a four track shelf above one of the staging yards. I do rotate it in and out on a regular basis. I am planning a third staging yard in the near future that will hopefully resolve this issue, but I may still keep the storage shelf so that I can buy more equipment!;)

Willie
 
I do keep all rolling stock and locomotives on my layout with the exception of a few brass locomotives that are too long for my turntables. With the use of hidden staging tracks, everything is on the layout, but I am slowly running out of room.
 
I park em all on the rails when not rolling em. I was worried about parking locos on "hot" track but I have had no problems. Even when an accident shorts the system the ones parked do not seem to be affected. DCC/NCE.
 
I have a rather small layout and I have way too many pieces of rolling stock and locomotives. I collect ore cars and have at last count 300+ cars. Many are waiting weathering, loads, metal wheels and KD couplers. I run ore trains which are limited to 13 or 14 cars. Strings of ore cars do like nice on sidings.

In the past I used purchase all engine numbers of locomotives I wanted on the layout. If a DC locomotive, I also purchased decoders for installation. I would venture that over 50% of locomotives have never left their original boxes. 50%+ of my locomotives are sound equipped.

I collected some locomotives of limited runs of seldom heard of railroads.

As for rolling stock, I have again too many pieces and most are in their boxes. As an example, I have a collection of KD's box cars and they run only when a do a period train. I do run some of my favorite road names and they stay on the layout.

Enough said....!

Thanks.

Greg
 
I have more locomotives than I can store on my track system, even with a RIP track, under-ground staging, and a roundhouse. I keep the unused ones in their original packaging, but in the same room as the layout because I control the climate in that room. No mold, no dry cracking wood, no track kinks or buckling, no solders pulled apart. And when I go to lift the locomotives from their cartons and surrounding rubberized foam, they come out cleanly.

It's a little like Christmas morning after not having used a particular locomotive for a year or two when I open the box, and there is another gotta-have favourite beaming up at me.
 
As I do not have a layout, all the locos and cars live in storage boxes. A few of them get to come out to play on modulars or the the museum layout from time to time.

I would have to eventually have a very large layout if all (either locos or cars) were to be stored on it, so I doubt they ever will.
I might be able to get all the passenger cars on if I would build a scale (not selectively compressed) of some large Union Station. St. Louis Union Station would probably have some room to spare.
 
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I usually have 15 or so locos on the tracks along with 300 - 400 pieces of rolling stock. I keep another 30 or so locos on open display shelves in the basement and the remaining 200 or so in the display cabinets upstairs.
Rolling stock that isn't on the rails will be in tubs on shelves under the stairway.
 
I don’t have enough room on my layout and I only have 16 DCC locomotives
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I have another 12 DC that I’m slowly converting to DCC. My ferry and sorting Yards are too small to keep all the rolling stock on the layout. I like the idea of shelves so I guess I’ll look into that.
 
I planned to build a yard that would hold my favorite unit-trains (modern crude-oil, Railbox boxcars, FedEx spine-car, and a military consist), but I'm afraid the stubs won't be long enough. Plus I have a ton of passenger stuff. I also have way more locos that I can put on my layout (currently about 60 or so locos, and well over a 100 pieces of rolling stock). I also often forget what I actually have. Like someone said, it's a nice surprise to dig out older locos you forgotten about—it's like getting a new loco!

I like the idea of having a shelf of unpowered track, since I'm not too keen on either the display case approach, or the put-them-back-in-their box method. I have some Ikea shelving that I can use for that. I could even make some scenery on them to make like static dioramas; though, they'll really just be long shelves to hold my off-layout locos. It would be nice to fabricate some long Plexiglas covers to keep the dust off them, though.
 
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I also have more locomotives than I can store in logical locations on the layout. Trains move on and off the modeled portion of the layout. The freight cars in these trains move into a storage location, under the staging yard and locomotives are moved to my bench. Right now, I can store all the locomotives needed at various locations on the layout and only have locomotives I'm preforming maintenance on, on the bench. I have five locos on the bench, all needing sound decoders, decoders or rebuilding.
 
You gents have a lot of stuff :cool:
That is an understatement. When I belonged to a club, one of the other member's wife approached me and ask how many locomotives I had. When I looked puzzled, she explained her husband already had 6 and wanted to get another one. I did my best not to laugh and finally told her I didn't know how many I had, but it was at least an order of magnitude more than 7. His layout is now over 6 smiles long and I am certain he now has at least 40 locos just sitting on the trains in staging.
 
When I belonged to a club, one of the other member's wife approached me and ask how many locomotives I had. When I looked puzzled, she explained her husband already had 6 and wanted to get another one. I did my best not to laugh and finally told her I didn't know how many I had . . .

That was funny! I honestly have lost count myself. Not that I have THAT many, but I think it's definitely more than 60 or so. I really need to finish my loco database that I built in a macOS database application Ninox (below), so I can keep track of decoders and whatnot.

I know that when Fox Valley Models came out with their new, highly detailed GP60 molds in N-scale, I bought about a dozen since they had both Roman-type and speed-lettered SP locos (my primary road). My next major purchase will be InterMountain's SD40T-2s in Roman-type Southern Pacific and SP Kodachrome when they release in May 2018. According to my Morning Sun books, both SP and Santa Fe (I model both) had a lot of GP60s and a ton of tunnel-motor locos in my period (early 1990s).

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Sample screen, custom built in Ninox' macOS DBMS.

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Custom pull-down menus are a breeze to create in Ninox.
 
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I really need to finish my loco database that I built in a macOS database application so I can keep track of decoders and whatnot.
I keep meaning to do that for myself, but it just sits on the todo list. Right now I just write them down in a spreadsheet.
 
I have a spread sheet with almost every bit of rolling stock I own. It needs to be up dated. I think I have around 23 locomotives. Is that enough? Probably not!
 
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I have a spread sheet with almost ever bit of rolling stock I own. It needs to be up dated. I think I have around 23 locomotives. Is that enough? Probably not!

That is not enough. I thought that I had enough at 80+, but bought four more last month! Some older ones have to be retired to the standby shelf for now.
LOL

Willie
 
That is not enough. I thought that I had enough at 80+, but bought four more last month! Some older ones have to be retired to the standby shelf for now.
LOL

Willie

I have to talk with my wife about this, she will be so disappointed that I don't have enough!
 



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