Longest Trains in the World on regular service in 2006

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

In another topic, I mentioned watching trains at Rochelle taking 10 mins or more sometimes to pass the webcam.
I remember one episode of Michael Palin’s Sahara trip where the ore train was 2 miles long with just a single coach at the end for passengers.
I have not checked the Guinness book of records but with the fund of knowledge shown on this site,perhaps someone can answer
1/ Longest freight hauled in regular service anywhere in the world?
2/ Weight on average of same?

I have heard of the 14,000 ton runaway in the states on a Discovery feature about accidents on trains.

Does the pay of a train driver(Engineer) reflect the responsability of such large freights?

2

As far as regular service, the heaviest trains currently operated are probably the ore operations in the Pilbara region of Australia. I don’t know how the operations in West Africa compare.

3

How would one determine that? I think I saw some trains at least 2 miles long but that is just a sheer guess. [:D]

4

I have run a 16,000 ft van train.

5

That works out to three miles long.

How far out was the slack on that thing?

6

Not a regular train but I have seen trains stall on Cajon pass and the DS will have a following train give the stalled one a shove. Between two trains the total footage can be well over 10,000 ft.

7

CN regularly runs 12000 ft container trains from Deltaport - Vancouver BC to Toronto ONT .

8

the pilbara trains in WA are approx 220 cars long, but lately they have been running 330 car trains

9

i have seen trains that pass by my grandma’s housein phillipsburg nj that were at least 2 miles long. as for the weight you just cant measure that but for each car depends on whats being hauled but spicifics i cant answer

10

The Australian Train was 4.5 miles long! I hate to have been stopped by that monster going uphill and there was only one grade crossing in the area. The train was stopped for 4.5 hours to fix a pulled drawbar. BTW…it had over 600 cars

11

That was a couple years back…a few weeks before christmas…had to combine vans/trains becuase of problems.

12

WOW!!! I have not seen a train that long before. How in the world do they get the power to pull that beast up a hill???[?][:0][:0] What kind of power do they use??

James