November 2011 issue of MR - car floats

[pnolan48]

A 400-500' long car float would not be unusual. I believe they were about that long in NYC. It's been a LONG time since I looked at that.

[sirenwerks]

The PRR had super long floats with a steering house that sat above the cars on a bridge structure; that ran between Cape Charles VA (at the southern most tip of the Delmarva Peninsula) and Norfolk VA, across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
Here's the Captain Edward Richardson @ Norfolk:



The largest of her kind and last; she was built in 1948 and ran into the 1960s, had a four-track arrangement, and had a 32 cars capacity.

[Bob Bufkin]

The Chesepeake car float was still running in the mid 70's.  I was stationed on a minesweeper and the ship sailed to Little Creek, VA during the middle of winter.  There was ice all over the bay that year and as we entered the bay headed for port we wound up as an icebreaker for the car float right behind us.  Don't recall if it was the same one but had a lot of railcars on board.  Do recall that I could see a PC Baldwin switcher waiting to unload the car float.

[pnolan48]

I'll guess the 32 car layout was 7-9-9-7. Nine 40-foot cars = 360 feet. And I'd put at least 20 feet on each end for a total of 400 feet length. Pretty big beam too--I'd guess about 60 feet. I wouldn't want to pilot that on a rough sea.

[pnolan48]

Roger,

Two inches in N Scale is, of course, 26.66 feet. That amount of "freeboard" (or height of deck above water) puts this float well into the "ship" category. My biggest freighters have a freeboard of about 1.5 inch, with a maximum of perhaps 2.25 inches at the bow (i.e., they are "swept" from bow to stern, not flat). The working deck of a car float would be flat. The car float images I've managed to find show a freeboard of between 6 and 10 feet. I suggest you consider this a ship, with a different set of design rules and details. Or raise the water considerably.