Pretty amazing stuff

[Dizerens5]

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.

[nhmaf]

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.

[Dizerens5]

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

[nhmaf]

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?  ;-)

[nhmaf]

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?  ;-)

[Dizerens5]

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.

[wa1udg]

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.