15 November 1967: The Norfolk and Western Railway operates the then-longest train in the world, 500 loaded hoppers of coal from Iaeger, West Virginia, to Portsmouth, Ohio.
Sure it's another success for Precision Transportation, but so what? Here's what: Five hundred hoppers loaded with coal plus six locomotives (EMD SD45 with the high hood, each rated at 3600 horsepower) and a single cabin car equals 21,424.75 feet. In other words, that's over four miles of train, hauling 48,000+ tons of coal. For comparison, modern unit trains of coal "tend" to max out at around 130 or so hoppers of similar size.1 Forty-eight thousand tons is more than the standard displacement of an Iowa-class battleship, so make of that what you will.
I doubt this effort was repeated, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone else tried it. My source for this post indicates that the train topped out at 20MPH, for whatever reason. I am neither an employee of a railway nor am I particularly good at operations, but I would bet that such a train would probably be more trouble than it's worth, for the following reasons:
1. Unless you're running said train on something akin to the Pennsylvania Railroad's four-track mains (or the similar facilities of the New York Central), one could forget passing this train. I've never heard of a twenty-five thousand foot siding, and I'd hate to be the poor SOB responsible for walking this train to check all the car brakes. "Rock breaks scissors, you lose." "When I get back to this locomotive, you die."
2. Talk about swamping the receiving facilities. "Yeah, I'm, uh, gonna need you guys to come in on Saturday..." I'm not sure what's in Portsmouth, Ohio, but I wouldn't bet on facilities to handle such existing there in 1967. Maybe Lambert's Point could handle that at some point, but I don't know.
3. Costs of operation. When trains are slow, costs go up. Look at it this way: A high-priority intermodal train is often allowed to run around 60MPH, if not faster. A crew can work a maximum of twelve hours. Under absolutely optimal conditions, that's 720 miles of travel per crew. (This never happens, for a variety of reasons.) Compare our 500-car train. It tops out at 20MPH, for whatever reason. In the absolute optimum, that's 240 miles of travel per crew. To equal the distance of one intermodal train, you'd have to pay three crews, not to mention the guys who had to get the crews to the train, wherever it tied down at. This gets rather expensive.
Almost all the information that you could desire about this operation was dug up from a posting to bit.listserv.railroad back in 1996.
Hooray for Google Groups and congratulations to the Akron Zips as they defeat the University of Ohio Bobcats. Why this? Because I watched some of it while trying to compose this post.
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1 I'm not entirely sure what the aluminum hoppers that the UP and BN&SF use are capable of carrying, nor am I entirely sure what the NSR's Top Gons are capable of. One dimly remembered reference suggests that the capacity is similar to the traditional "100 ton hopper", but that the car itself is lighter, which makes for less wear-and-tear on the track and so forth. Once again, Rip will know more about this than I do.
A day at the Virginia Museum of Transportation suggested the 130 number; I did roll-by counts for the heck of it on a few trains and got that several times. The viewing angle I had didn't let me see into the cars to check for loads, and I didn't think to check the springs on the trucks.
Posted by Country Pundit at November 15, 2005 11:48 PM | TrackBack