Western Railroad Discussion > This may have been elsewhere here prior, but......WOW!

Officially, the longest train in the world......



This Australian BHP Iron ore train, is the longest train to ever run in the world, and is officially in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest train.

The record was set on June 21, 2001 in western Australia between Newman and Port Headland, a distance of 275km (170 miles) and the train consisted of 682 loaded iron ore wagons and 8 GE AC6000 locomotives giving a gross weight of almost 100,000 tons, moving 82,262 tons of ore, the train was 7.353 km (4.568 miles) long.

BHP iron ore did this to test locotrol which is where locomotives are evenly placed along the length of the train.

The locotrol setup was 2 locos-166 wagons, 2 locos-168 wagons, 2 locos-168 wagons, 1 loco-180 wagons then the last locomotive on the back.

This very long train is controlled by only one engineer.

Pondering the sadistic side of yours truly, imagine if the defect detector caught him - "Axle two-one-four-four....." Poor b*st*rd.

This thing must have spanned at least two time zones or a three course meal!

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LsuNWjRaAo

The youtube video was 8 min and 2 sec long. The first dpu was @ 2min, the second dpu was @ 3min 52 sec, the third single dpu was @ 5 min 50 sec and the final dpu was @ 7min 59 seconds. It appeared as though they loaded several different trainsets and then hooked them all together. They got their money out of the driver that day.....