What determines the sequence freight trains are assembled on American roads?

You may see two engines pulling cars in the following order:

3 autoracks
5 piggy-back cars
10 gondolas
5 tank cars
1 UP box car
5 BN boxcars
7 Galveston Wharves boxcars
10 grain hoppers
9 flatcars


Why would the railroad put the autoracks closest to the engine and have the flat cars in the rear of the train?
Something in the RR logistics system must determine the logical order in which consists are put together.

If the train is a road-switching train, I would think the sequence of the consist would be especially important since customers are
situated along the track in a specific order. If the autoracks are in the lead, could that mean that a car dealership is the first customer along
the route? A mainline manifest freight, I'm thinking, may have cars in any random order since the classification yard they are bound for may
break them down eventually and rearrange them into some logical order for distribution to customers. It's like customers who just dump outgoing
mail into a large blue public collection receptacle on the street. This mess of letters has to be broken down and sorted logically sometime later.

I used to be a letter carrier for the USPS for a short term. Mail was logically sorted in the sequence of customer addresses along the local mail routes.
Do railroads use a similar logic when assembling trains?

When road-switching trains pick up empty cars from customers, are they also put into the consist in some logical order?

Usually car order is determined by the blocking of destination according to a railroad's practices.

Then toss in rules about car restrictions, possible grade operation rules and trains might look different.

A road freight from terminal to terminal will look different than a peddler-local. Locals that block the cars in a sequence will get the work done faster than picking out a car one at a time.

Blocking cars.....putting a number of like cars together for the same customer? It wouldn't seem logical to do it any other way.

I've seen long manifest trains that look odd, disheveled....4 green grain hoppers, 1 black tank car, then followed by another green hopper, then 10 brown boxcars, followed by a yellow one, then a number more brown ones and so on...

About grades....I would think the longest and heaviest cars should be closest to the engine. I think railroads have to sequence cars in the most efficient manner possible without compromising safety.

The peddler-local is what I refer to as a road-switching train. The one that picks up and delivers to local customers. The sort of "brown UPS van" of railroads.

At train is assembled as to what city or factory comes first or last in order down the line ... Or a section that is to be set out in a yard comes first or last, so they can easily Cut and send the remainder of the long haul train to the far away terminal ... Sometimes the tropicanna train has a rear section of trash train cars ... So the sections can be disassembled and sent to separate destinations ... They just don't make up a train of tank cars first because they are way too cool looking for rail fans to view ... Tank cars and all other rail cars are separated In order as to first or last destinations they go in the U.S.

It's called blocking, meaning setting up the freight for delivery so that there's not a whole lot of on the road switching needed.

This might be helpful.

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]https://youtu.be/VoWDVauCca8

The blocking and sorting is done right from the beginning so to assist in moving freight quickly across the system. Unlike the old days when railroads were the only game in town, today they need to be efficient and compete directly with the much smaller freight trucking industry. This is why many freight yards are empty too. Freight sitting in the freight yard wastes time and money, not only for the customer but also the railroad.

Trucking companies do the same at their local hubs. Goods are picked up from the customer's warehouse/factory, and placed at the LTL hub for distribution according to the routes that the goods are to take. The LTL trucking company hub is no different than a freight yard on a rail system.

The goods then travel either directly to the end-customer, depending upon the length of the route, or are sent to additional hubs where the goods are then sorted again, bulk loaded, and redistributed for an additional trip or local delivery. The trucking companies may also include partners and do a hand-off to them to serve a market that they don't work with directly. Estes Express, for example, will use GI Trucking for anything west of Chicago. New Penn will hand-off to its parent company Yellow Freight for similar service west of the same region. From 2004 until 2009, I worked in a Customer Administration and Order Administration role for a small manufacturer that shipped goods nationwide as well as worldwide. There's a lot more to this including harmonized tariff codes, weight classification systems, and inventory control that go into the whole aspect of logistics.


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Dangerous materials may be separated from the locomotives by a non dangerous buffer railcar

Often when people play with toy trains or model trains, they give no thought as to why they hooked up the cars in a certain order. When I play Trainz, I have a number of customer sidings. The cars are picked up or

delivered in order that the customers' sidings appear on the line. Cars are picked up and set out on my small yard for awhile, then sometime later the cattle cars are all instant unloaded and all the local cars

sent back to their respective customers so this process can repeat indefinitely.

I have the following customers on my "modelz" route in order:

1. Stover Feed Mill, LLC with grain elevator: 5 Illinois Grain Corp. covered hoppers
2. American Freight Co., 2 Galveston Wharves Boxcars
3. Campbell XX Beef Ranch w/ feedlot, 5 cattle cars with loading/unloading cows action
4. Don's Diesel Stop with storage tanks, 4 tank cars
5. Davidson Intermodal, 5 TTX Trailer Train well cars
6. Norton Concrete, 4 cement hoppers
7. Boone Family Farm with loading platform siding, 3 Pacific Fruit Express reefers (door-to-door railroad service for a family farm!!)

JonMyrlennBailey said:

I have the following customers on my "modelz" route in order:

1. Stover Feed Mill, LLC with grain elevator: 5 Illinois Grain Corp. covered hoppers
2. American Freight Co., 2 Galveston Wharves Boxcars
3. Campbell XX Beef Ranch w/ feedlot, 5 cattle cars with loading/unloading cows action
4. Don's Diesel Stop with storage tanks, 4 tank cars
5. Davidson Intermodal, 5 TTX Trailer Train well cars
6. Norton Concrete, 4 cement hoppers
7. Boone Family Farm with loading platform siding, 3 Pacific Fruit Express reefers (door-to-door railroad service for a family farm!!)

Click to expand...

Well ... isn't that just so interesting ... Do tell us more

Since we have absolutely no idea where those Industries are, they mean nothing to us

I run a train from one terminal in Conway pa, to Enola pa

These industries of mine are entirely fictitious. In railroad modeling, it's much easier to set up a fictitious world than to model a part of the real world.

After all, most model trains run around in circles and that is seldom prototypical in itself unless you are modeling the railroad at Disneyland.

Still these make-believe industries of mine are over my line in a certain order. Yes, one is even a cattle feedlot.

The only terminals I have are a small yard with a locomotive roundhouse and a hidden staging yard in the back side of the layout.

No portal trains are ever generated (emitted) on my model layout. When I want my mainline clear, my trains just go hibernate like winter bears

in the tucked-away staging yard. When my mainline is clear, I can do pretended maintenance by running out snowblowers, running a work train with a crane

or running peddler-local trains to serve local customers. I now revised my long mainline manifest train with a logically-sequenced block of cars toward the head end that can now be

easily switched out with another block of cars waiting in my local terminal for more railroading realism. From the customers to the local terminal to the mainline and then back again in reverse.

My model layout, a 7.10 mile two track loop, resembles a section of railroad but I named it Pine Mountain Division. Railroads may use the term section and division differently.

My fictitious railroad in fictitious "Squatch County" of northern Idaho is called the "Jon Bailey Home RR" since most model railroaders have their pikes in their own homes.