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[quote user="Murphy Siding"]      I would think that being able to make the cars lighter, with higher capacity, would mean the trains would/could be the same length, but with a higher total tonnage.[/quote]They could, but this is what I was trying to say in that last paragraph:  All the cars in a 200-car dedicated train-set could get lighter from front to rear, and this would lower the tare weight.  Likewise, in a 20-car dedicated train-set, all the cars could get lighter from front to rear.  However, even the heaviest, first car in a 20-car set would be much lighter than many of the cars in a 200-car set.  Theoretically, you could say that 180 of the cars in the 200-car dedicated set would be heavier than the heaviest car in the 20-car set.  So on a per-car average, the shorter the set, the lighter the tare weight.In a dedicated train-set, if the load weight remained the same as the same number of loose cars, the lower tare weight would simply increase fuel economy.  If the load weight were increased to replace the reduction in tare weight, more total tonnage could be carried for the same fuel consumption of the same size conventional loose-car train.  However, when you raise the capacity to match the reduction in tare weight, you need a stronger car for the added capacity.  And this added strength adds tare weight.  So you can see that this would take some serious number crunching to find the optimum length and capacity for a dedicated train-set.
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