Several of us on 'The Railroad Forum' have done the same with a passenger car.

To say its been around the world is an understatement!

From the US to the 'Isle of Man' and England and onto Australia before heading back to the US. Believe Jeff S on here has hosted it too!

Not sure of the mileage it has covered at the moment, can't get into the relevant website whilst at work but there are some photos of it running on my layout on Christmas Day!

Brian W.

Josh,

Could you give us more details about how the "traveling car" hosting works?  I'd not heard of it before, so I can only guess.  Thanks.

It's a way of interchnaging cars between model railroaders. I know Tony Koester, Allen McClelland and another fellow did it when Tony still ran the Allegheny Midland but I haven't heard of it since.

Irv

When Stewart first introduced the Ft units, Model Railroader got a set of them in EMD demonstrator colors and sent them around the country or else took them around, I'm not sure which; but they had an article in the magazine featuring the Ft's on various well known ho scale layouts around the country including Jack Burgess' Yosemite Railroad (would not let them "stinking diesels" past Merced depot) and the Tehachapi layout at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum.  There were 10 or 12 layouts that they visited if I remember correctly, but I don't remember the others.

That's fun.

Years ago I participated such a group. It was required from the member to take pictures of the visiting car and send the pictures to the owner of the car.The cars travelled between New Zealand, Austalia, USA and Europe. I took a car two or three years to finish the journey.

But with rising postage it went crazy for me.

Wolfgang

Josh,

Could you give us more details about how the "traveling car" hosting works?  I'd not heard of it before, so I can only guess.  Thanks.

Don, in the past, the ones I've been involved in (my own car and TWP car) were a single car that's mailed around to different forum members.

This current 5 person roundabout requires each member involved to have a car, and each month we mail the car to the next person.  One of my Dad's QHS boxcars is in the group (from me).  The next car will be in around the middle of Jan, and is a 3 or 4 bay covered hopper.

By the time this 5 month rotation is up, and my car arrives back to me, it'll have traveled the US & Canada, and will then be boxed up and mailed to my Dad.  I'll then replace it with another car, either something of mine, or one of my Dad's again.

Our current rules are:

1. Members wanting in on the car trade must be a member in good standing on the forums and current members agree.

2. Owner of the car has final say as to whom it can or can't go to.

3. Shipped USPS Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation. Each member pays to ship the car to the next member.

4. Member can use the car for a maximum of 1 month before it has to move on. The secretary will provide the names of everyone involved and where the car goes on its next journey.

5. Each member provides 1 car to be rotated. Car must have metal wheels and KayDee (or KayDee compatible) couplers installed.

6. No member may modify, change, permanently affix or in any way do harm to another members car. Accidents will happen I’m sure. Please notify the owner of the car immediately if it comes in the mail damaged or an accident happens.

7. All members will provide the following information to the secretary:

NAME
ADDRESS
PHONE #
EMAIL
PHOTO OF CAR
DESCRIPTION OF CAR

8. Each member will provide the USPS Delivery Confirmation # to the secretary each time a car is shipped. That way all of them can be tracked constantly.

9. Each month, we’ll post the pictures on the forums in the weekly photo fun section.

I'm considering doing something similar, for member here, with scenery on their layouts.  Ship the car out, and get a photo or two, and then submit it to the magazine...

Here in New Jersey, a friend and I who model two semi-connected parts of the same railroad are talking about trying to do something like this. Now, why do I say semi-connected? Because while the parts of the railroad were adjacent to each other, they were separated by the Hudson River and a carfloat ride! My buddy Dave Ramos models the Lehigh Valley's West 27th St terminal set in Manhattan, and I model the Jersey City, NJ terminal. A bit of detail about the Manhattan yard if you are not familiar with how New York Harbor operations worked - A lot of railroads that terminated in New Jersey had "pocket" terminals in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx that could only be reached by carfloat, and did not connect with any other railroad other than their own via a carfloat ride, and this one was no exception. Thus, if the LVRR delivers B&O boxcar 12134 to 27th Street, it's gonna come back the way it came in a matter of hours, and vive versa.

So, onto  how we model this - Dave and I are lucky that we - A) Live all of 45 minutes away from each other, and B) We (try) to attend each other's op and work sessions, so we see each other usually at least twice a month. The only real wrinkle in all this is that Dave models 1947, and I model 1951. Four years is not THAT big of a deal you might say, and luckily, neither one of us is so strict in our prototype modeling (we are more Proto-Lancers than anything else, especially me) that it's not a hinderance. So, when I get to operating, I will load my carfloats going to Manhattan (aka the other side of the basement), and make a record in the form of a float manifest (just like the real RR did), and that way, we track the cars that have "traveled" to Manhattan. Now, in the same session, these cars are most likely going to come back to "my" end of the railroad (Jersey City), but not necessarily all of them. So, after the session is over, I will recover these cars from wherever they are on the layout, and take them over to Dave's house (I plan to operate on the 1st Friday of the month, Dave on the 4th) and place them appropriately on his layout, either as already delivered, or due to be delivered shortly via carfloat. During and after, the records will be taken again, and the process will continue, most likely with cars taken from his collection entering the "pool".

The amount of cars that will be operated in this fashion I figure is around 60 or so during any one session (a carfloat holds approx. 14 cars, so that is 4 full floats + four cars, and since carfloats don't always get filled to capacity.......Well, you can do the math. And while we do have the actual carfloat schedules for 1947, we usually end up running more than the three that were actually scheduled during a session.

Just though y'all might be interested in yet another bit 'o operational fun we Harbor guys have. I beleieve Dave is doing a clinic on this at the Cocoa Beach, FL RPM Meet in January, and I will be at the Malvern, PA RPM Meet in March.

RAH

But what if one of you was modeling in N? I suppose you'd need duplicate cars in both scales.

Irv

You could duplicate a lot of the rolling stock in both scales, but there are cars available in ho that aren't available in n scale, and I suspect that there are also cars available in n-scale that aren't available in ho. 

Before he tore down the Allegheny Midland, Tony Koester used to operate cooperatively with Allan McClelland where by an entire train from the AM would leave the AM and go to the V&O and a train would leave the &O and go to the AM.  They would make a phone call to let the other dispatcher know when the train left one railroad for the other.  This transfer of trains even occured after the V&O had moved on to the 1990's while the AM was still in the 1970's. 

Hey Russ, correct you are, I used to run that job on the A&M side. As a matter of fact, it was the second thing you needed to do when working Sunrise, because if you didn't, you not only ran out of room to do the work as trains began to arrive/depart, but you also missed important forwarding connections. But I digress......

I don't think Tony and Allen went so far as to match cars for cars though. At least I don't recall him saying he/they did (I'll have to ask him the next time I see him). And the phone calls didn't go on for very long either, I only remember them being made a few times in the 8 years or so that I operated there. I operated only a very short time in the Appalachians Lines era, but all thru the 1968 and 58 era sessions. Seems like a very long time ago......

RAH