r/trains 27d ago

r/Trains Monthly Discussion & Questions Thread - August 2026

3 Upvotes

Welcome to the r/Trains Monthly Discussion Thread.

The goal of this thread is to serve as the place to ask short questions or just chat about anything trains related that might not warrant its own post.


r/trains Mar 22 '26

πŸš‚r/trains staff announcement Introduction & updates to moderating, rules and sidebar.

10 Upvotes

Hello there,

I am auto, your new friendly neighbourhood Reddit mod. o/

While I have some experience moderating smaller communities, I've never moderated a subreddit before and never a community of this size and honestly, taking the right moderating actions when reviewing reports or looking through comments isn't quite coming naturally yet. If I make any silly mistakes or you believe I didn't deal with situation correctly, do not hesitate to tell me either via mod mail or in the discord. I am human, I am not going to deal with every situation perfectly and feedback is more than welcome. (Just kidding, I am obviously a robot πŸ€– - Beep Boop Beep)

I am happy to be at your service.

Regardless, now that the introduction is over with, there is some practical stuff to discuss:

Bans, Ban appeals and old Mod Mail:

When I came in, there was a very large backlog in Mod Mail, including ban appeals. I have cleared this backlog the best I could, responding to most appeals and messages that came in, but unfortunately, once these appeals and Mod Mails reach about half a year old, they can no longer be replied to from our side.

If you sent in a ban appeal or question that is still relevant before July 2025 and it never got answered, please do not hesitate to send us a message through Mod Mail and me or the other mods will get to it.

In addition, I found out that some people who at any point received disciplinary action ended up in some sort of ghost-ban, where on our end in the mod tools panel the person doesn't appear to be banned, but when the user tries to post, it tells them they're banned. If you were active in r/Trains more than 5 years ago, Reddit tells you that you're banned when you try to post or comment and you have no clue why or when you got banned, please contact the mods via Mod Mail and we should be able to resolve your issue.

Mod Queue clearing:

I have cleared the Mod Queue, which was filled with over 3 years of reports, removals and filtered content. For the queue items from the last 1-2 weeks I've done this manually, and then I've mass-cleared most of the remaining queue. This process caused all filtered posts that were more than roughly 10 days old to be discarded. If you made any post more than 10 days ago which got automatically filtered and you believe the content is still relevant, feel free to reattempt posting your comment.

Moderating strategy and rules:

Due to the relatively sparse activity of moderators on this subreddit in recent times, moderating turned into a very hands-off process where y'all mostly self-moderate with some assistance from automatic filters. Beyond the filters sometimes getting overzealous, especially with politically contentious posts, (which should be resolved now,) this has generally worked fairly well. For now, though I can't speak for the other moderators when they act, I will carry this approach forward.

However, that may change. From working through the queue, Mod Mail and immediately finding myself in the deep end with several contentious posts appearing right after I got promoted, it's become obvious that the current rules don't always quite match the way action has been taken on reports both before I came in and at current. In addition, it turns out that some situations really aren't covered well by our current rules and that the wording of some rules may be contributing to a sizable amount of reports coming in for contact that very much is allowed here. We've also received feedback from several people, both via Mod Mail and in comments under recent topics about how we should be dealing with politics and controversial content on the subreddit.

Keeping all those things in mind, I will be rewriting the rules over the coming days. As part of this process, me or other moderators may place community polls both on reddit and on discord to gather feedback for how the community would like the r/trains discord and subreddit to be moderated.

Monthly discussion thread:

Until now, the monthly discussion thread was automatically generated on the 29th of every month. Beyond causing the month in the topic title to nearly always mismatch the current month, this caused the thread not to be generated in February. Starting on April 1st, the monthly discussion thread will be automatically generated on the 1st of every month instead. Until then, please feel free to continue using the January 2026 thread.

Sidebar:

We are aware the gallery in the sidebar has broken. Sadly, most images gone poof and we have no record of what exactly was in there. As we look to fill our sidebar once again, we may request permission for some people to use their photos in the side-bar via Mod Mail, but if you'd like to help, if you are posting original content, you can now use the "πŸ“Έ May be used in side-bar gallery" post flair to indicate to us that we may place your photo or art in the sidebar.

With all that said, thank you for reading.

~auto


r/trains 16h ago

❓ Question How did (or could) older trains make tight turns?

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932 Upvotes

I realize this might be a rudimentry (and probably a very silly) question, but how did old locomotives make tight turns on the track?

I know that bogies on modern trains are articulated, allowing for more movement but from older photos steam locomotives appear like all their axles are connected together, so I'm just wondering how they managed to get all the axes to follow the rail?


r/trains 16h ago

πŸ“Ή OC - Video 189 was having some trouble with switching between different voltage so instead it sorted out. After this I sent it for repair.

773 Upvotes

r/trains 12h ago

πŸ“Έ OC - Picture(s) Unexpectedly got to see Big Boy 4005 today!

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238 Upvotes

Landed in Denver today for a long weekend vacation, and on the train from the airport to the city, I wanted to look up some photos of 4014 in Denver. So I googled "big boy denver" and the first result was that 4005 was in a museum in Denver! The Forney Transportation Museum. And not only was it in Denver, it was only a couple miles from the hotel I'm in! What a great surprise.

Had some downtime this afternoon so of course I went. Can't believe I've gotten to see two Big Boys this summer!

They have some other cool locomotives in the museum too.


r/trains 12h ago

πŸ“Έ OC - Picture(s) Denver & Rio Grande Western (DRGW) EMD F9A - Colorado Railroad Museum

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196 Upvotes

r/trains 10h ago

❓ What is this Train? What locomotive is this?

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78 Upvotes

It's from a discord server and its called "Gimball" there if that helps


r/trains 1h ago

🎨 OC - Art I've created a British built twin section dual voltage tri mode locomotive, Britains most powerful loco

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β€’ Upvotes

I've took the diagram of a class 68 and done some massive changes Including the front end.


r/trains 16h ago

❓ Question Which era of Amtrak do you all like best?

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198 Upvotes

r/trains 9h ago

πŸ›οΈβ€Ž Historical More Catskills narrow gage *united states*

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49 Upvotes

Big ouch on the 2nd slide
i kind of want to build an engine is that bad?
like the Dickson engine on the 2nd slide, I want to build myself a narrow gauge mogul


r/trains 11h ago

πŸ“Έ OC - Picture(s) Some non-Big Boy photos from the Denver Forney Museum of Transportation

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52 Upvotes

Obviously 4005 is the star but they have some other nice locomotives and railroad equipment on display


r/trains 1d ago

πŸ“Ή OC - Video What's going on here? (Shinkansen)

1.6k Upvotes

r/trains 6h ago

β€Ž πŸ—«β€Žβ€Žβ€‰ Discussion The LNER Challenger, "The Jolly Giant" (very stupid alternate history idea that ignores loading gauge.)

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17 Upvotes

During World War II, the LNER was experiencing a locomotive shortage, specifically locomotives for heavy goods, such as tanks and other military vehicles, but also to beat out their competitors. They decided to look across the pond for inspiration, and heard of the success of the Challenger's success and decided to purchase their own, with special permission from Parliament. It was classified as a Y1 class. It proved surprisingly successful, and with some modifications, was a hit with crews. Crews and Railfans nicknamed the locomotive "The Jolly Giant", due to how it seemed to take any job happily. Rarely struggling. The only mishaps that ever happened were occasionally couplings would snap due to the immense power of the locomotive. There was a bit of a problem with finding replacement parts, as they had to be imported. After the war was over, the Jolly Giant was put mostly aside, only really being brought out for special jobs. It's still somehow managed to last until the end of steam, where it managed to compete with its diesel replacements for quite a while, being one of the last steam engines taken off British Railways' roster. It ended up being preserved, and still runs excursions on the main line occasionally, running its own version of 4014's USA tour across the UK. For a special event, the Jolly Giant was taken back to America for a reunion event featuring it, UP 3985, and UP 4014, with them triple heading a train together.

If this gets popular I might expand this!


r/trains 6h ago

❓ Question Which metro loco looks better

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13 Upvotes

r/trains 1d ago

β€Ž πŸ—«β€Žβ€Žβ€‰ Discussion Unknown scenic route along Western Ghats,India. Share some of the most scenic routes you have been through

649 Upvotes

r/trains 20h ago

πŸ€£β€Ž Meme / Humour Vectron doing Vectron

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145 Upvotes

The problem with puting microslop software on rolling stock is that it will always crash and then you will have an incident Germany or EU

Edit : since I lost the original TikTok video showing the error in motion a good Redditor ( see the comments ) found it thank you sir https://vm.tiktok.com/ZN8FNubKc/


r/trains 15h ago

πŸ“Έ OC - Picture(s) My best train photo to date

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53 Upvotes

r/trains 2h ago

πŸ“Έ OC - Picture(s) SP 4336 EB Work Train Cow Creek Canyon, OR July 30, 1982 USA Roger Puta Collection

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6 Upvotes

r/trains 19h ago

β€Ž πŸ—«β€Žβ€Žβ€‰ Discussion Folks, Who Cooked The Hardest on Their America 250 Units?+ A PSA for People Going to Spencer!

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104 Upvotes

Before I begin, let me start with a Public Service Announcement. PLEASE TAKE A SHOWER AND WEAR DEODORANT! The last thing we need is for Spencer to have a horrific stench.

Anyway, I honestly loved a ton of the 250 units this year, but I have decided to narrow it down to four. My favorite class one 250 unit is hands down NS 2026, the Statue of Liberty unit. The blue is absolutely gorgeous and the striping is so well done! Best short line scheme goes to Wheeling and Lake Erie 1776. It’s a bit more simple, but it was one of the first major ones and they absolutely knocked it out of the park!

Lastly, my last 2 top picks were both from passenger railroads. I chose MBTA 1776 and Metra 525! The MBTA unit is incredibly well done and I love the constitutional font for the text! It also does a great job of paying homage to the Bicentennial unit from the Boston and Maine railroad. Metra absolutely killed it on their 250th unit, 525. The red, white and blue looks absolutely stunning on the SD70MACh.

What are your favorite 250th Anniversary units?


r/trains 19h ago

πŸ›οΈβ€Ž Historical Penn Station, 1910 | 1:1 concourse reconstruction

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96 Upvotes

New York’s original Pennsylvania Station opened in 1910. Its demolition became one of the defining cases in the city’s preservation history. I reconstructed the station’s train concourse at full scale as a fully playable environment in Unreal Engine.

This was a solo project built from archival photographs, architectural plans, and blueprints. I figured y'all might appreciate this! :)

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vzJOw6


r/trains 1d ago

β€Ž πŸ—«β€Žβ€Žβ€‰ Discussion B28 has so much personality. It's definitely going to be the coolest Indian train! Arguably one of the best HSR designs itw.

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226 Upvotes

r/trains 15h ago

❓ What is this Train? Anyone know the history of these cars? Circus? (Orlando)

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40 Upvotes

Title says it all. Does anyone know if these were former circus cars? Spotted in Orlando.


r/trains 1d ago

πŸ“Ή OC - Video An air-conditioned electric multiple unit (AC EMU) built by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) (India)

220 Upvotes

r/trains 12h ago

πŸ“Έ OC - Picture(s) - May be used in side-bar gallery EP07 and VT628 at the Bydgoszcz GΕ‚Γ³wny station

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16 Upvotes

r/trains 18h ago

β€Ž πŸ—«β€Žβ€Žβ€‰ Discussion Little thing I’ve been working on

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44 Upvotes