While at Deshler, Ohio on Monday I witnessed a 160 car mixed freight with 2 engines. I am curious what is the longest train you have ever seen? Personally my longest is 193 car intermodel years ago.
180 empty hoppers on ICG headed south through Rantoul, IL in the 70’s.
Normal northbound loaded coal trains usually ran about 90 cars, so I’m assuming this was a doubled up move of two trains worth of hoppers.
Unfortunately, it only had one train’s worth of power, and the two units were on their knees.
what is neat about Deshler is the 160.6 detector in belmore.it gives the axles and length in feet.I have seen q 500 come up with 9000 ft of train.There was another autorack train that was 11000 feet at snyder road near Defiance that had lost 2 units on its trip west.
stay safe
Joe
I was first in line stopped at a level crossing and it was the train running between me and the nearest facility. I must have hopped around my car a dozen times, but the three young ladies laughing at me in the car just behind me made a covert operation essentially impossible.
Yeah, pretty sure that was the longest train I have ever seen.
Well, what do you want for nothing?! [(-D] [swg]
The AB Freight Brake was designed for a train length of 150 cars. Its successor, the ABDW, was designed for the same length. The manua\facturers’ train test racks reflected this. I believe WABCO presently has a two hundred car rack. Biggist concern is transmission time which can not exceed the speed of sound and is actually about 900 ft/sec. Slack control is directly affected by transmission time. Many years ago a railroad (Northwestern I think) experimented with a 300 car train but had to let it drift to a stop. Electronic brakes obviously totally change the picture.
I believe most all CSX Defect Detectors transmit the number of axles and the train length when communicating to train crews. Dispatchers will routinely ask crew for their detector communicated train length to compare with the consisted train length…knowing the detector train length to be the most accurate.
I pretty much gave up on counting cars to see how long the train is… I found tha,t just like photographing trains, I spend too much time NOT doing the reason I am there… to “WATCH” the train.
The longest I have ever witnessed was in Elkart Indiana. Dispatcher told a maintenance guy the he needed the mainline NOW and he didnt want to slow down the 16,000 foot train he had coming. When he arrived, he had 2 units up front and 168 autoracks in tow. Took him forever to clear. I have it on video but it’s on VHS tape.
Most cars I’ve counted was 202 just last year just north of Neenah. In the warmer months, its now common practice on the CN around Neenah.
Most axles I’ve hear was while I was fanning in the twin ports. “Total axles 1038ish”. I tried to find him but he must have hit the detector heading north. That was on the BNSF. I figured it was a doubled up empty ore or coal train.
Longest train I’ve seen was a CPR eastbound I was a conductor on out of CN Thornton yard in Port Mann. 5 locomotives and 210 cars.
Up here in the Ports, the standard length for a BNSF taconite train is 183 cars.
Doesn’t the use of Distributed Power units mid-train also change the picture?
My personal est is a 175 car CN Manifest comming off the J in Mundelein, IL. this thing took so long to get through.
Yes, distributed poweer changes things because you are now runniing two trains from one control.
About 5 years ago a fast moving CN Auto Carrier train heading West towards South Bend had to be the longest train. It took at least 8 minutes to clear the crossing, when most trains take only 2 to 3 minutes to pass traveling at the same rate of speed.
Andrew
The train in the video below still ranks as the longest for me. I deliberately recorded the defect detector going off right before the train’s arrival to get the length and axle count. I’m sure that DD has never given off numbers that large before!
Joe:
I also listen to the CSX detector, this one at BI224.8 and keep track of length, axles, etc.
The Q500 is normally about 50-75 cars heading to Chicago. Does it swap blocks at Deshler? Or perhaps Garrett?
CSX often runs Q156 and Q163 in the 10000 -12000 ft range. Those seem to be the long intermodals which ply the Chicago - NYC route.
When is the new intermodal yard going to be in service? It will be interesting to see how that changes these trains.
Ed
One observation that I’ve noticed concerning super-size trains is that the measurement used is getting away from number of cars to actual length. Compare N&W’s 500-car train in the late 1960’s with UP’s 18000-foot intermodal of the past year or so.
I know where detectors are near North Baltimore and down around the Belmore area, where are they to the north and west of Deshler exactly? Thanks 
BNSF doublestack w/DP’s about 13500 feet long
It was Jan 10 2010 and UP was trying a test train (im sure it was to cut cost by having 2 trains combined into 1 and paying for 1 crew). 15,000’ set up as a 3x2x2x2 DPU. Total axle 854 per the detector. It was taking 5 minutes to clear a crossing.