USA Freight Trains

[Robert66]

When we last came to USA on business we left the LA Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard after 5 days and headed by road to Vegas across the Mojave Desert.
After a while to our right we noticed a magnificent freight train, I was gobsmacked, I had never seen such a long train in my life, it seemed to last forever, at some point we could not see the tail end, how long it was I will never know but certainly it seemed 30/40 times anything we have here, I forget how many engines it had,
I tried to photograph it but failed.

Back in LA outside Graumans Chinese Theatre we waited for a while to see some of the cast of Batman on opening night.
I will not say why we suddenly left in case someone takes faux offence.

I was also gobsmacked to see a MacDonalds in the desert,

Do you have very long passenger trains? ours are small and crowded, you can pay for a seat and not guaranteed one, you could stand all the way.

 

[Doug Lester]

No we do not have long passenger trains. Besides the local commuters we only have Amtrack which gives only so so service. As far as the freight trains go, it takes a lot of engines to pull a long train up through the mountains.

Doug

 

[Drew Riley]

Passenger/Commuter trains are all relatively short, and generally aren't too much longer than the average landing at the train stations they stop at. Freight trains can be up to 200 cars (more than a mile) long, and if I'm not mistaken, they recently increased the local limit around here.

That said it really depend on the area as well, as you don't want mile long freight trains blocking main through ways for more than a few minutes at a time, so some companies will limit the amount of cars per engine based on that.

My last job was for a company that was built between 3 sets of rail tracks. Some times you'd have trains coming down each track, one right after the other, from commuter to freight, to local steel mills, etc... What a pain that became on some days!

 

[Robert66]

Bit dodgy if you ask me.

As kids we used total steam train numbers and record them but nowadays the interest in diesels and electric is NIL here.