The New And Improved Unofficial R65 Forum V2

General Category => Totally Off-Topic Discussions, Rants, Tire & Oil Threads, Etc. => Topic started by: Dizerens5 on September 30, 2011, 09:22:42 AM

Title: Pretty amazing stuff
Post by: Dizerens5 on September 30, 2011, 09:22:42 AM

Last year Union Pacific ran a freight train 3 1/2 miles long from Dallas to Los Angeles. It had 294 freight cars, 618 containers and 9 locomotives. It ran at 65 mph and there were no mechanical failures. Vision of the future I guess.

Title: Re: Pretty amazing stuff
Post by: nhmaf on September 30, 2011, 10:01:33 AM

And you can bet that it was more than 10X more fuel efficient than the over 300 trucks it would have taken to move the same freight.

Title: Re: Pretty amazing stuff
Post by: Dizerens5 on September 30, 2011, 11:38:33 AM

As the train was going westward I bet all those containers were empty!

Title: Re: Pretty amazing stuff
Post by: nhmaf on September 30, 2011, 09:48:23 PM

I doubt it - railways hate dead-heading as much as trucking companies - usually even more so.   Besides, what would anyone expect to get form Los Angeles anyway?  ;-)

Title: Re: Pretty amazing stuff
Post by: nhmaf on September 30, 2011, 09:49:39 PM

I doubt it - railways hate dead-heading as much as trucking companies - usually even more so.   Besides, what would anyone expect to get form Los Angeles anyway?  ;-)

Title: Re: Pretty amazing stuff
Post by: Dizerens5 on October 01, 2011, 03:33:59 AM

I surely don't know much about the US economy but I understood that eastbound containers from Los Angeles or Long Beach are loaded with all those imports from China but they have to go back empty.

Title: Re: Pretty amazing stuff
Post by: wa1udg on November 12, 2011, 12:26:50 PM

The UP had a coupla of TURBINE powered locos built for mountain hauling, they did the job but each had to tow a tank car full of fuel behind it.