Sunday night, I caught a glimpse of a BNSF TOFC train at Mina, S.D., westbound. It had 12 cars, two empties, and 2 “big” locomotives. It was making time westbound. On a line that usually hauls coal and grain, this very rare. Does BNSF have some sort of hot-shot TOFC train westbound out of Aberdeen that would warrant running this train? It sure looked like 14 cars that could wait for another train? The engineer on this over-powered, little train must have thought he was in hog heaven.
A reroute in all likelihood. The short length indicates this was a service-committment reroute rather than a derailment reroute (the latter would usually be a whole train). Did you notice anything about the pigs – UPS, LTL, TL (e.g., Roadway, Schneider, J.B. Hunt, etc.)?
Very interesting! I’ll have to inquire about this.
Update – inquiry made. If I learn anything tonight I’ll let you know.
S. Hadid
On a TOFC a “car” can be anything from a 50’ flatcar to a 5 pack spine car. Did you get a quick count of what kind of cars were being used? Were they UPS trailers by any chance?
It was getting dark, so I couldn’t see what the trailers were. And they were going fast. You have to remember, this is , for the most part, a backwoods section of the BNSF.
The train you saw is Q-CHCLAU. A westbound Hotshot with no EB counterpart. power comes east on a manifest. Monday through Thursday this train runs as the Z-CHCLAU. Normally on Friday and Saturday it runs as Q-CHCLAU. If this wasn’t a holiday it would have had 2 or 3 autoracks too. BNSF has a contract that requires fast WB service,
and just because it has 2 big units on a little train overpowered as you say. dont make it fun to run it will make you work more as it will have the tendancey to speed . a under powered long train is much easier to run
Thanks! I never knew they ran that type of train up there. I hope that the fact that there were only a dozen cars meant that they had a slow day. I can’t picture running this train every day with 12-15 cars?
I see your point. I just figured it would be easier, as far as climbing hills, and not having to deal with a mile of slack.
Holiday weekend.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the second unit wasn’t isolated until it got out into the bigger hills.