Eastern Railroad Discussion > Is this a "10"?

I know in the history of railroading
there have been longer trains but this
afternoon I saw an eastbound container
train at Bee Bee Ridge 20 miles east
of Syracuse, NY that had a total of
187 cars. In addition, it had inte-
resting power - 3 units composed of
CSX, Union Pacific and Santa Fe locos.
It beats the next longest one I have
seen by 21 cars.
As far as the Buffalo to Albany corridor
is concerned, did I witness a train pass
by of "epic proportions" or is this just
another long train?

Did this monster have 187 actual cars, couplers on each end (singles, doubles, 5 bangers, etc.) or 187 platforms (boxes/containers/trailers, etc.?) I find it a bit hard to believe, even in CSX land. Even 187 TTOX types - single trailer, 2 axle cars - would be a stretch. This is interesting.......

This was a count of the
cars not the containers.

Some of the cars were the
custom-built type designed
for containers only. A lot
of these were double-stacked.

Others were the type with
one set of wheels - you
know the kind. On these
some of the containers
overlapped onto a second car.

And then others were just
plain old flat cars with
a container.

I think you really spotted a "10"!

Hate to say but got that one beat. Shortly after I came out of Engineer training in 1990, I was working the Rocherster, NY trainmans' list. They ran out of engineers so they went to the senior non-promoted engineer at the terminal(me) for an SETO-8 relief crew(dogcatch crew as the regualar crew was going to go dead on the law)
I get to work, see the inbound engineer,(an old head who was a crackerjack engineer too) and he tells me I have 3 units and 188 cars
all auto racks, except for the head 12 cars are 5 platform double stack cars, a total of about 18,000 ft of train(for those who know Rochester NY area, head end was at CP369, rear end was back around the curve at Brighton(MP366 or so).) But that wasn't all, he also informed me that every time the train was bunched(slack in) the air would set up on the train and bring you to a halt. They thought the car dept found the offending car(with a defective slip joint which allowed air to escape from the brake pipe when the slack was in) and we(the new crew had to set the car out which was about 90-100 cars deep. we set ot the car, and were off to Buffalo. I didn't bunch the train again until we got to Buffalo, and sure enough as soon as I did the air set up on the train bringing us to a halt. But I was VERY happy to be getting OFF the train at this point. Big Trains= big problems
GWL