Longest Train You've Ever Seen

[Anonymous]

The other day I watched a 143 car train pass and began thinking about how many cars is the longest train that rail fans have ever spotted?

Please share any details you recall such as the year, location and loco power.

[csxengineer98]

do you mean just in car counts or in feet..you can have a lot of cars, but have a "short" train. some cars are longer then others.. you can have a 100 coal hoppers and be at 6000 feet, and have the same number of auto racks and be almost twice that length...

[Anonymous]

Car count is what I was interested in..thanks

[BRAKIE]

I recall seeing 2 N&W GP30s pulling 250 loads of coal in the 60s.I have both seen and rode on 220 car coal drags on the Chessie pulled by 3 old GP9s in the late 70s and early 80s...

Yesterday I saw 2 NS big GEs(CXXw)on a 175 car coal train.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure how many cars it was, but it was at the Tehachapi Loop last year. A WB BNSF unit grain, the head end was at the east end of the Woodford siding, while the end was still inside the loop. About 1 1/2-2 miles long.

Chris

[Anonymous]

The longest I've personnaly seen is 188 loose cars (no articulated cars) of mixed freight, eastbound on the CN Halton sub near Milton Ontario. It was hauled by three 6 axle Alco type Centuries and two GP 9s. This was in the mid 1980's. Close to this length is still commun today (but not the MLW Alcos). In Buffalo NY I've heard reports of trains of over 200 cars more recently.

[Anonymous]

Don't think you would consider this a long train but seen a train with 102 empty gondola's. What made this train stand out was it was being pulled by only one engine! Do not know what kind of engine and I do not believe it was owned by a railroad. It was painted green and gray with a X after the owners initials. That engine was screaming. Is there a rule as to how many cars can be pulled by one engine?
TIM A

[wabash1]

i have one question . you said you saw 2 big ge engines on a 175 car coal train. what is a cxxw engine

[wabash1]

tim most all the train on the ns are govern by tempature. when the tempature drops so is the leigth . that is what the time table says. i personally have never seen this done.as the tempature drops the trains get longer now and tonnage goes up. the reason for this is that as the tempature goes down its harder to get the air pumped back up on longer trains. that is why it takes so long to get a pick up made in the winter as it takes time to pump up a 8000 ft train. the biggest trains i have pulled 10,200ft long 6000 ton intermodel train, and a 7100 ft 14xxx ton freight . the freight had a sd 60 lead sd 70 and 2sd 40s good running train the intermodel train had 2 dash 9s it ran fair

[edblysard]

Hi Tim,
Do yo know if it was a switch engine? It would be smaller than most, a cab at one end, long hood forward? We use MK1500Ds, kinda a road engine/switcher. 1500 horsepower each. I have switched 131 loaded plastic hoppers, no air, with these in a MU...lots of work..
Stay Frosty, Ed

[BRAKIE]

j,I can't tell these newer GEs apart unless they have the make of the engine under the number on the cab.I can tell you this.They was GEs with wide cabs.Iwas to far away from the crossing to see those letters,I did get to see the numbers which I did not write down the numbers as I normally don't do that. I do know both units was in the 9000 numbers.I did count the cars though.
Sorry j,todays railroads with the look alike GEs and EMDs doesn't do a thing for me even though I still railfan. Now this was seen on the Sandusky line throuh Bucyrus and nothing unusual about 2 GEs or 2 EMDs on a coal drag through town-a very common sight.

[Anonymous]

153-piggy back with 3 CSX Dash-9's

[Mookie]

all of them - after the engines go by! :)

[Anonymous]

255 car mixed Frieght in Elkart, IN I don't remember what engines where pulling it but they were conrail

[Anonymous]

j, I forgot about air. What you said makes perfect sence. When I see a long train I alway's think of horsepower as in pulling the train. I negected to realize, the longer the train the more air you need. Thank you for that education.
TIM A

[Anonymous]

It was not small, The long hood was in the back and small hood was forward. I looked up a picture of your trains, this one was bigger. You mentioned "no air" I thought all trains need air for brakes? What does MU mean?
TIM A

[Anonymous]

How far was the move? I suppose you had the independent on. Still must have shoved you some.
gdc

[edblysard]

Tim, in yard switching, you dont charge the air brakes, in fact, our car men bleed them off on the inbound cars in our receiving tracks. We then drag a cut of cars out with the switch motors, shove around to the yard, and start kicking. This is called flat yard switching. In a hump yard, the cars would be shoved up a incline, and the pin pulled at the top, allowing gravity to pull the car down the other side and into the track. If the brakes were charged, every time we let a car or cut of cars go, that car and the ones still coupled to the motor would go into emergency brake application. We rely on the skill of our engineer using only the brakes on the locomotive to stop the kick, after I have pulled the pin on the cars we are kicking (switching) into a yard track. Top speed doing this is only ten mph, but try to stop that many loaded cars with just engine brakes...it takes a lot of skill on the engineers part, and a lot of trust on the foremans part. MU stands for multiply unit, two or more engines connected by mu cables that respond to the control stand of only the unit the engineer is on. Wabash, or gdc could most likely give you the correct hp to tonnage to air brake specs. You didnt say if this was on a main line, or inside a industry.
Either way, once the brakes were charged, stopping all of that, although no small task, wouldn't be as hard as getting it all moving again, especialy on a incline. If it was a newer, big motor, SD90, SD70, something like that, one motor could do it easily. An older motor, SD40, or a GP40, or GP38, it would be a lot of work, but still doable...
Ed

[edblysard]

About a mile, from our receiving track to the main yard, then shoved into a couple of cut holding tracks. One of those yardmasters flashy moves, he just had to have that inbound track clear. I dont think we got over 4mph, but still a little hairy knowing the only brakes you got are the ones on the motor. Ending up switch cut about 30 cars at a time, flat yard switching, lots of kick um, that'll do, stretch em back, you've been there before. Takes about three times as long as needed, but you cant convince yardmasters of that...wore my helper out, wore me out too. And talk about some hot brake shoes on those poor motors. My engineer finally had to call a break, said his arms were getting tired.
Stay Frosty
Ed

[Jackflash]

Ed we do some similar long, heavy, flat yard
work, what we do is air up the head 8 or 10
cars of the cut, with a heavy train it beats
just the independent brake. jackflash

[edblysard]

Yup, done that, it makes a big diffrence. This was one of those "do it now" yardmaster moves....you knw, where he screwed up, and you end up pulling his butt out of the fire..
Ed

[Anonymous]

Kicking 30 loads at a time is not an easy task, either. gdc

[edblysard]

How true, you have to give your engineer twice the stopping distance your both used to, and it takes forever to work the cut down to a managable level...
Stay Frosty
Ed

[Anonymous]

Longest train was any I have seen while waiting at a crossing just after taking a water pill!

[Anonymous]

gdc, When you say kicking, is there some one running along the side of the cars to pull the lever that uncouples the car? Are the air hoses already disconnected?
TIM A

[Anonymous]

You might have to be old or a hillbilly or both to get this one, but, the longest train I ever saw, went down a georgia line, the engine past at 6 o'clock and the cab past by at 9.

[edblysard]

Hi Tim,
Yup, except we dont run, if the trainmaster is looking, running is against the rules, ha ha.., to better answer your question, yes, when you tell the engineer to "kick um" he notches the throttle out to take up the slack, then opens it wide to "kick" the cut of cars, the switchman, (me) pull the cut lever up on the correct number of cars, the uncoupler has a catch in it that will release the knuckle to allow it to piviot on the knuckle pin, so once you lift the lever up, the catch unlocks the knuckle, most of the time. If the "pin" as its called will not stay up by itself, you have to walk alongside, holding it up. Or if your engineer is serious about kicking, you jog or run. When you have enought speed up to get the cars to go where you want, you tell the engineer "that will do', and he applies the independent brake,(locomotive brake) to run the slack out and pop the whip. If it all works right, and it usually does, you can switch a lot of cars per hour, if you and your engineer have worked together for a while, and know each others rhythm. Having a good switchman helper, who stays one step ahead of you lining up the switches can even make this job fun, in a weird way. He actually controls how fast the job goes, if the switch isnt lined, you cant kick the cars, so the more cut-in the helper is, the better it is for us all. And it make no diffrence if the hoses are uncoupled or not, the cars air brakes have been bled off, and the glad hand,the ends of the hoses, are designed to pull apart from each other.
Stay frosty,
Ed

[Anonymous]

Tim, hopefully they are not running along side too far. Actually, if the slack between the cars is in as in shoving, the uncoupling pin will lift when the lever is raised, allowing the knuckle to open. When the engineer lets off the throttle, the cars uncouple and roll away. Some railroaders also call this drilling. You see this most commonly in flat yard switching. When the uncoupling lever has been lifted and the brakeman wants the cars to be released, he or she will tell the engineer to "kick 'em".
We once had a yard engineer named Whorley. The brakeman would say "Kick 'em, Whorley". Occasionally he'd get it backwards and say "Whirl 'em, Kickey".
The air hoses do not have to be uncoupled but the train line has to have been bled, in other words, no air in the train line. That would be similar to what Ed described earlier with his 140+ car cut with no air. That must have been a mother dog to handle.
Regards and have a safe day. gdc

[Anonymous]

Why didn't you take a shorter cut or put air on? I hope the terrain was perfectly flat. Still, it sounds risky. Maybe hard to imagine from the computer. How many hand brakes did you set up for the bumping post cars?
Regards, have a safe day. gdc

[edblysard]

Hi gdc,
The original plan was to cut the train up in the receiving yard, into cuts of 30, bring that around, shove 15 into a hold track, and switch 15, then grab the other 15, switch them, go get 30 more, so forth and so on. Sounds like a lot of time, but in reality, it would have taken less time to switch them all that way. But the yardmaster was insistent we clear that receiving track, swore he had a grain train about to die that needed it. Never saw the grain train show up. But part of the yardmaster productvity pay is based on how many receiving tracks they get cleared on their shift, so....and yes, its flat terrian here, this yard was built and designed in 1924, with steam switchers in mind, the leads are all level until you get to the first switch, then every thing on the righthand lead is on a slight incline down, the straight lead is level, and the yard body is slightly bowl shaped, with a left hand L shape to it all. You dont have to hammer the cars on the right side of the yard, the incline works like a mini hump, after six years switching the same leads, I "know" which tracks will roll easy, which ones you have to put some heat to. And my helper isnt quite human, this kids eats two cans of green beans and a can of tuna each meal, cold and raw. Yuck. His arms are about the size of my legs, if he ties something down, it isnt going to move unless you drag the wheels flat. There is another job working the top end, and all the tracks we switched into had cars in them already, my helper just added his brand of brakes to thoses already there. We did end up closing all the gaps in those tracks though. And where we normaly switch 150 to 250 cars a day on this job, we took all day to fini***heses. And I never saw that grain train arrive, I asked the yardmaster, he swore they died on the main. I dont know about your railroad, but down here, letting a dinky 80 car grain train die on a main line isnt a good carreer booster for a dispatcher..as to the number of cars, every day we drag out 120 car trains on average from the receiving tracks, but they are your normal mix of lights and heavys, we have a cut holding track in the yard where we shove a 40 car cut, and switch what we are left holding on to, then pick up that last 40 and switch them. Normaly, we cut them up over in the receiving track, bring half around, leave half. We have five receiving tracks, the longest hold 135 hoppers, the shortest holds 89. If the pins are fairly good, six or so to a pin, and the heavies are distributed sorta evenly through out, I will come around kicking with 60 cars, if the pins are a bunch of singles of doubles, I will slough a cut or two into the less used tracks. Kicking down one lead, then draging back to kick down another, one car at a time makes the day really long.
Stay Frosty,
Ed