Metal Monsters: The Advancement Of The Freight Train | Trains That Changed The World

I saw this on either Discovery or the History Channel not long ago.

With CSX buying Pan Am Railways, we will now have 9,000 ft trains running up here. CSX and NS currently run trains up to 15,000 feet long elsewhere on their systems.
 
Yes, someone recently told me about a UP consist 15k feet long, and while they had DPUs middle and back, they burnt up the lead unit heading up a grade. Hard to see how they think they are saving money if they are burning up their power units. Having said that, after driving through Nebraska where most of the freeway driving is getting stuck behind trucks passing trucks, I was wishing UP would assemble some REALLY long consists of truck trailers and clear the freeway a bit!
 
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Yes, someone recently told me about a UP consist 15k feet long, and while they had DPUs middle and back, they burnt up the lead unit heading up a grade. Hard to see how they think they are saving money if they are burning up their power units. Having said that, after driving through Nebraska where most of the freeway driving is getting stuck behind trucks passing trucks, I was wishing UP would assemble some REALLY long consists of truck trailers and clear the freeway a bit!

I've seen that on the highways too. UP and others do run a lot of TOFC and container traffic but apparently the trucks are still pretty thick.

I agree I don't see how they're saving money if they run into issues such as burning up traction motors hauling those long freights. Norfolk Southern and CP Rail also ran into issues with the former Delaware and Hudson with these huge trains. There's a lot of curves and some modest grades on the line. All it takes is one of these trains to stall and the line is blocked because the trains need to be broken apart and moved over the grade in pieces. Now, this used to be a double tracked mainline that was single tracked all over in the past and now they current owners are paying for that. Since then, they have cut the trains down into smaller sizes but they're still quite long.
 
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