Michigan model railroad club runs the world’s longest model train

With state, county, and local government officials in attendance, Chi-Town Union Station, a model railroad club in Commerce Township, Mich., recently assembled, measured, and operated the longest model train in the world. The O scale train consisted of 2,003 freight cars, two cabooses, and 26 locomotives. The model train measured 1,112.06 feet in length.

The train consisted of a variety of freight cars but was mostly made up of hoppers and boxcars. The train weighed about 1,400 pounds and took more than 2 hours to assemble, measure and run. There were also hundreds of hours spent testing and practicing for the event.

“In our practice sessions we gained a greater appreciation for the skills of the locomotive engineers on long coal freight drags,” said Paul Gribbell, the president of the club, “We pulled the entire end frame out of an expensive brass locomotive and some cars shattered under extreme tension and others were crushed under the weight of the following train.”

The record train was operated by five engineers, each responsible for five to seven locomotives and 150 to 300 cars. The layout is operated with Digital Command Control (DCC). “It was crucial for each engineer to keep up with the segment of the train ahead,” Gribbell added.

Chi-Town Union Station is located in a 10,000 square foot building. The club’s layout focuses on modeling passenger trains that served Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s. The layout has more than 8,000 feet of O scale track in operation.

“We settled on using our three-track, 573-foot, B&O main line,” Gribbell adds, describing the run,”We started our pull on track three turning through 1,680 degrees and rising and falling about 22 inches until just prior to reaching the starting point, then switching over to track two. From track two we crossed over to track one and went up and through the station and then back down onto the B&O’s track three again.” During the run, the train could be seen running alongside itself on all three tracks.

The train was measured on a relatively long, straight section of track. “A licensed surveyor established the specific length of a marked section of track,” Gribble said,”On record night, the train was indexed through that section and incrementally measured with lasers and optical measuring equipment to get the overall achieved length of 1,112.06 feet.”

For more information on Chi-Town Union Station, you can contact them at:
Chi-Town Union Station
8275 Cooley Lake Road
Commerce, MI 48382

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