I will start collecting 57 foot reefer cars for a 25 car PFE block and a 18 car steel train using coil steel cars.I want something different then your common grain or coal train.
I’m putting together my first one actually, Soo SD60 and an ex-Conrail SD50 up front, and 21 coal hoppers behind, 18 of the Walthers ones and 3 of the P1K models. It’s made to simulate the shorter 1-2 engined unit coal trains I see on the CP here in Milwaukee.
Here’s a newer type of unit train. All tank cars carrying ethanol, I presume. A neat sight to see a string of 50-60 identical tank cars. Kinda like the old TankTrain concept in the 80’s.
Actually I’ve got another kind of unit train too: a full train of lumber and wood products. Usually it’s a pair of CN SD40-2s with 12-16 centerbeams and bulkhead flat cars. These trains run from west to east loaded and east to west empty, bringing Canadian lumber on its way to New England and the American Northeast.
Also it’s going to take me years but since I model November, I’m going to need lots of unit grainers. So far I’ve got about a dozen covered hoppers but will need a lot more to make operations realistic.
I’m sure there are guys that are like me and don’t have enough of the layout scenicked to take a pic of a unit train , but I will be ready for pics by this summer I hope.
“How many guys here run unit trains, or intermodal for that matter? What about coal drags?”
My shots are coal drags and intermodal.
The “unit train” concept pre-dates 1956 by a wide margin. By definition a unit train is simply a train made up of cars shipped from the same origin to the same destination.
TT1/TT2 (the Pennsy’s main TrucTrains) ran non-stop in 1956 from Chicago to Kearny Meadows, NJ. It doesn’t get much more “unit” than that.
I believe there is more to the definition of a unit train than what you’re making it out to be. Under your definition, most through freights would qualify as a unit train because they go from city A to city B without switching cars.
A unit train is made of similar, maybe even identical, cars that go from shipper to customer as one complete, unbroken unit and returns. A more specific origin and destination than Chicago or Kearny Meadows NJ.
While the concept of a unit train may date back to when you reference, its popularity is more recent.
Okay, someone needs to tell me when the “official” birth of the unit train was.
Also, I assumed that when you load up an intermodal train at one facility and ship it, without pickups or setouts, all the way to another facility where it is completely unloaded, it constituted a unit train. I’m not sure that was correct, though.
I know that by the mid-60s, the PRR was painting H43 hoppers with yellow circles above the reporting marks specifically to identify them for “unit train service.”
The first true (official, per PRR records) PRR unit coal train operated June 18th, 1964. It was a 74-car coal train of cars owned by Pennsylvania Power & Light Company, running from mines at Osceola Mills, PA to the Brunner’s Island power plant near Harrisburg.
One more thing to add to the definition: a unit train is all the same commodity. That’s way an intermodal train is typically not thought of as a unit train. While it may all be the same car type, the commodity carried may vary from trailer to trailer.
Relax you guys…I always thought of a unit train as a train with all of the same cars going to the same place, don’t matter when it happened or what kind of cars.
It could could be said that unit trains are today probably thought of as 2-3 SD70MAC’s pulling 80-100 double stacks or a long string of newer Trinity 5161 Hoppers behind a pair of ES4400DC’s. Or how about the newest unit train, the Ethanol train. One thing for sure, a coal drag is a unit train in my book whether its 1956 Pennsylvania or 2008 Powder River Basin.
Nice pics Dave ,lets see more 1956 unit trains[tup]
I’ve been working on HO and N versions of arguably the coolest (pardon the bad pun) unit train: the Tropicana Juice Train. I have the 27 orange reefers Athearn released in HO, and am working on getting at least that number in N scale (Red Caboose makes them).