I had inadvertantly started the subject line as “Length Matters” but I didn’t want to get the thread locked down before it even began…
Anyway, I was reading the latest Trains issue about the Railway Mail Service and I was struck by the reprint of an earlier story about the CB&Q’s Fast Mail which mentioned a WWII swollen consist of over 80 cars in one train! I’m used to riding the Amtrak CZ with maybe 7-8 cars and looking at a Chicago Metra train with 10 cars as being quite long but I seem to remember that several western postwar streamliners ran 12-16 or more cars. Could that have been a regular occurance or just holiday/peak loads? Does anyone recall of any trains (like the UP’s “City of Everywhere”) that regularly ran, say, 14 or more cars? What’s the longest passenger train you ever saw?
The Coast Starlight was 18 cars long when I rode it in 1976 - got a picture of the SDP40F’s from the dining car window going around the horseshoe curve on Cuesta grade. With this length, the train had to be broken to fit on the platforms in Seattle.
Don’t think passeneger trains were much longer than 20 cars due to problems with adequate steam supply in the old days - and HEP more recently.
I believe that the Michigan Railroad Club ran some special trains twenty or more cars in length between Detroit and Holland (for the Tulip Festival) during the late 1960s. The ones I saw, made up mostly of GTW commuter-service coaches not being used during the weekend, were powered by three generator-equipped Geeps.
I think when you get much longer than about 20 cars, you start to have issues with the graduated release function on passenger car air brake systems.
Amtrak’s Auto train regularly runs more than 20 cars, but it’s cars are equipped with frt car braking - no graduated release.
I can recall the early days of Amtrak when there were lots of trains that ran 14-16 cars or so in length. The FL - NY trains and the Broadway were usually about this size. Part of the reason the trains are shorter now is that the capacity is higher. A “heritage” long distance coach held about 44 people vs. 60 for Amfleet II and a 10-6 sleeper only 22 vs 30 for a Viewliner.
Back in the 1960s, my dad commuted on a LIRR train that ran 16 cars powered by a single FM C-Liner from LI City out to Port Jefferson, but most of those were 60 foot “Ping Pong” coaches.
Some of the longest passenger trains I remember were the combined NP/GN trains such as the North Coast/Empire Builder on the CB&Q leg of their runs. I’d guess these were 20 or so cars during the summertime when train travel was still reasonably popular.
I also remember the holiday mail trains on the CB&Q as the heavy load brought out the 4-8-4’s. A good part of these trains were mail storage cars and REA express box cars, which I believe were converted WWII troop cars(or was it the other way around?) and they were quite long. I don’t think I ever saw the Fast Mail due to it’s schedule at night.
I’ve read that the western railroads ran special vacation trains during summertime in addition to adding cars to the named trains. I believe UP had one called the National Parks Special that ran on the route the American Orient Express sometimes takes. The vacation trains on western roads had Tourist Sleepers, but I’m not sure exactly what that means - modernized heavy weights?
I don’t know when the practice died out, but during the steam age railroads ran 2nd and sometimes 3rd sections, entire trains that followed shortly behind the main train. Some of these became regularly scheduled such as the Advance 20th Century Ltd. which ran ahead of the 20th Century Ltd.
The longest passenger train of which I’m aware would be the 18-car “Super Chief/El Capitan” during peak periods in the late 1960’s. Amtrak’s “Pennsylvanian” in the 1990’s may have been longer, but only three of the cars carried passengers and many of the mail/express cars were Roadrailers.
Mail/express trains tended to have longer consists than regular passenger trains since they could realistically be considered high-speed freight trains.
During the passenger train era the operating practice was to run extra sections, as up829 briefly mentions, not to lengthen the train. They had to do it that way because platforms in the main cities just weren’t long enough (many were stub terminals). Most of GCT’s platforms can only take about 14 cars. When the 20th Century Ltd. went to 17 cars during WWII the NYC had to move it to track 34. It couldn’t get longer because the platform was maxxed out. I have a publicity picture from the '20s showing Santa Fe’s “California Limited” composed of seven sections on seven adjacent tracks! Even when the Advance 20th Century Ltd. was running, I believe it was still common to run multiple sections of the 20th Century Ltd. (Only the first would carry the RPO.) Then there was the problem of access, too long and you have intolerably long hikes to the dining car, observation car, club car, etc.
Mail of course is different. They could empty the train at over a longer time period without complaints.
Longest passenger train. These days that’s easy. Both the RBB&B blue and red trains are just under a mile. With the power included (the host railroads provide power) the red train is over 1 mile long. I don’t know how many cars but I would guess over 50. they claim to have the longest regular running passenger trains in the world.
I’ve got a picture somewhere of a five section 20th Century Limited at Buffalo with two of the sections actually waiting for platform time. Canadian Pacific’s Canadian was a long long train. There are famous pictures taken of it in the Rocky Mountains where it just looks like it goes on forever. I’ve also seen older pictures where it took two Selkirks to pull it. Then there are also the shortest passenger trains ever, I remember seeing in many books and pictures the Penn Central locals just before Amtrak, one coach and one E8A. Cheers! ~METRO
When my family moved to LA in 1950 the Daylight was running 20 cars regularly (the max SP would allow). I’ve got commercial videotapes showing NYC and PRR mail/express trains that looked like they had to be 40 or more cars.
The PRR clockers - hourly service between DC and New York regularly ran 12 -18 P70 cars. The Congo and Senator were about that long also. When I used to ride the Duquense in the early 60’s it was a late running jack of all trade train with heavy head end cars. The train would pull into Lancaster and you would think it was a freight slowing before all the box and express cars would clear the platform and the coachs would show up. As I recall it would have 15-20 or more head end cars followed by 8-10 passenger cars. The original Autotrain was a long one also. It had 15-20 autocars followed by 15 or more passenger cars. It also had a couple of wrecks due to differences in the braking systems and I beloieve the FRA made them run them as separate trains.
The summer season VIA Canadian runs 28 -30 cars regularly and as few as 12 or 13 in the off season. On occasion during its cross country trip it will make 2 or 3 stops at one station because the platforms are not long enough.
During the period 1963-1972, the longest commuter train on the C.& N.W.'s Harvard Subdivision (a.k.a., the “Northwest Line”) was what I called “The Lake Geneva 400.” It was the first of two eastbound schedules in the morning and the second of two westbound schedules at night. The train usually ran with a single E-unit, it had 10-gallery cars, and a mid-train, single-decker lounge car that was once part of the Railway’s post-war passenger pool. At the Arlington Heights, Ill. stop it was not uncommon for the evening movement to discharge 1,000+ passengers.
Mondays through Fridays the evening alcohol sales in the bar car were positively phenomenal - they could be measured in terms of gallons of proof spirits sold per minute. And if it were possible to measure all of the cigarette smoke that was drifting through Cook, Lake, and McHenry Counties between the hours of 5-pm and around 6:30, my guess is that this train’s bar car would have accounted for half of it!
I have read accounts of UPs “City of Evrywhere” running around 30 cars out of Chicago. I have seen this train near L. A. with 24 cars. I once saw the train to Guadalajara,MX. leave Nogales MX. with 27 cars. I rode this train with 23 cars.
I once read somewhere that in the heyday of passenger trains (1920s to 1940s), during busy times they often joined up three sections of the Broadway Limited at Altoona and used one set of helpers to get them all up the mountain at once.
Well, since we’re on the subject of US passenger trains…
Why hasn’t the “double stack” philosophy impacted passenger car design more than it has? Yes, those Superliners are technically double deckers, but not in the sense of having a bottom deck and top deck with separate walkways through the entire consist. Yes, the commuter cars of some transit lines are double deck, but not all the way through, and besides those are not passenger cars in the classic long haul sense.
Consider it this way: 20’2" is the common height from rail to car top. A person-friendly compartment needs no more than 8 feet of height, there’s 16’ for two decks. You need maybe one foot in height from top of rail to car bottom, that’s 17’, and maybe 4" of structural material at the car bottom, mid level and car top for a total of 1 additional foot. That’s 18’ of compatible double deck with 3’2" to spare. We’ll save that 3’2" for the space above the trucks - with 28" wheels and lowrider truck design that should be enough. Between trucks then
The SP regularly ran the Coast Daylight, in steam,at 22 cars, as did the Lark. I have both observed and ridden these trains at this length many times. The longest SP train I rode, was a Thanksgiving weekend Starlight, in 1953 or 4, 28 cars, with 2 diners and 3 lounges spread throughout the consist. With the usual 3 headend cars, and with 4 heavyweight Pullmans, that would include 14 chair cars as well. Those who say the Canadian runs over 30 cars are correct. In CN’s Red, White and Blue days, in peak periods, the Super Continental would head east from Vancouver with seperate Montreal and Toronto sections containing 12 Puumans and 20 or more cars.Some mail trains did “go on forever”, but these examples are hauling hundreds of passengers, in style and comfort and, I might add, usually On Time.