Model Railroading > a ? about trains

i watched a coal train roll thru town today and noticed that on all of them one end was painted yellow, and the yellow end all faced the rear of the train..is there a reason for this? there musta been 60 cars

The yellow end signifies that that particular end of the car has a rotary coupler on it. This allows the railroad to run the whole train through a rotary dumper without having to uncouple the cars. Having each car facing the same way ensures that there is a rotary coupler between each two cars.

-Ironhorse

The coal cars you saw, like most modern coal cars, have a bright coloured end which also will have a symbol and the words "rotary coupler end" stencilled on it. These cars are emptied by rolling them over, still attached to the train. That is something else to see up close! Only one coupler on each car needs to have the special rotary coupler. Except a few rare cars such as we see on CP Rail trains which use a mid-train locomotive. Those double rotary coupler cars have two coloured ends. The double rotary car would be placed ahead of the mid-train unit, which of course, does not have a rotary coupler and cannot be rolled. Exactly why a locomotive should not be rolled over in a dumper was demonstrated recently at Robert's Bank when it ended up costing several hundred thousand dollars extra to dump one train.