KF> BW> Did you mean to say feet here, or tons?  A train stretching out for
KF> BW> some
KF> BW> 10,000 feet is nearly two miles long!
 
KF> Yep. Conrail does that sorta thing all the time with autorack drags. With
KF> them it's not difficult anyway, considering they're 89 feet, plus the
KF>drawbar.
KF> 100 car trains of them is nothing. And light, too. They ran a merchandise
KF> train a while back of 200-210 cars (I forget the exact number), they had
KF> midtrain helpers and all that. It was an experiment the decided not to 
ry
KF> and continue with.
 
Good grief, what's everyone doing around the U.S. railroad network,
emulating the Southern Pacific!?  The S.P. as a regular routine would
run virtually every freight train with _full_ tonnage, not letting them
out of the yard for the next terminal until every last car was coupled
behind the power up front. Part of the problem with this is that S.P.
also ran about as light as they could with power up front, which often
came back to haunt them on one or another of their busier mainlines at
the least opportune moment.
 
Imagine, if you will, being out on the main in front of the now-defunct
BSM, a hotshot that no one had better hold up on its way from the
midwest to Los Angeles, having one unit fail while hauling a two-mile
string of cars and having to limp to the next siding which, hopefully,
will be long enough to hold the full train without delaying the BSM.
Slowing the BSM for any reason was sufficient grounds for seeing the
division superintendent on your next time anywhere near the yards.
 
---
 # SLMR 2.1a # We all live in a yellow subroutine.
 # PDQWK 2.5 #51
 
---
---------------