Talk:Longest trains

Measurements
Since this is in English, measurements should be in the Imperial System. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.87.104.6 (talk) 06:19, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Last time I checked, Canada, India and Australia (well represented in this aticle) all used metric, so metric seems fine. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:09, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Both can be used. See the Template:Convert. Relspas (talk) 21:58, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Distributed power
Distributed power (railway) should really be a separate article. Tabletop (talk) 22:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Thinking about that, I agree with you... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Throttleer (talk • contribs) 04:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanktou.   Tabletop (talk) 02:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

BHP Trains
BHP trains are up 336 ore cars, with 6 or 7 locomotives. BHP run a "rake" which consists of 2 locomotives and 112 ore cars. 2 and 3 rake trains are commonly run on their railway.

210.8.191.97 (talk) 03:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

This page is a mess
with measurements like "say 400"... it needs some work. I'll try to write a better intro, but the specifics need to be re-organized in a meaningful way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.19.150.253 (talk) 02:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The page totally disregards and contradicts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sishen%E2%80%93Saldanha_railway_line — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.242.165.161 (talk) 12:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

This page would benefit from using a table to tabulate the data. That way it could be sorted as well, by train classification, category, etc. Relspas (talk) 22:04, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Soviet Union
Soviet Union The longest and heaviest freight train ran on February 20, 1986 from Ekibastuz to the Urals was carried out with the coal train. The composition consisted of 439 wagons and several diesel locomotives distributed along the train. The mass of is 43,400 tonnes and the total length of 6.5 km (4.03 mi).

Is this a regular train, or a test train for the record books? Tabletop (talk) 03:13, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Without a source, we can't tell. We can't even know whether the quoted text is accurate. bobrayner (talk) 09:09, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

South Africa

Sishen Iron Ore mine

The mine also set the world record for the longest and heaviest train – a 7.5km train of 660 wagons carried 68 640 tonnes of ore from Sishen to Saldanha Bay. Normally, trains are up to 2.3km long and carry up to 17 850 tonnes of ore each. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.24.123 (talk) 15:59, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Why?
I don't see many considerations on why some railway companies use those very long trains and others don't, not here and not in any of the related articles. In my sandbox I tried to find some. It's mostly common sense, I don't really have sources for it.

Pro (more important on long routes with homogeneous traffic): Contra (more important on short routes with high speeds): Apart from the couplings, this gives several reasons why European trains are relatively short. I think some discussion on these facts should be in this article. Maybe some of these consideration can be mentioned in this article or in goods train. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:09, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Long trains need less crew per wagon
 * Long trains need less passing loops
 * Long trains increase capacity of a railway
 * Coupling strength may be insufficient
 * Stronger lateral forces in curves increase maintenance
 * Long trains require long yards
 * Medium-size industries prefer frequent small deliveries, as this decreases stockpiles
 * Long trains take more time to shunt
 * Long trains need more power to travel at high speed, so speeds are lower
 * Long trains have less responsive braking systems, so speeds are lower
 * Long trains reduce capacity of a railway. (They are slower, and therefore reduce capacity when mixed with fast passenger trains.)
 * (Passengers only) Long trains increase walking distances
 * (Passengers only) Long trains increase the time needed to change trains
 * (Passengers only) Long trains can only be full when departing at low frequency, whilst total number of passengers increases with higher frequencies
 * I don't think you are correct about shunting: longer trains may require less shunting per car because sorting is an efficient operation and more cars can be included into each block intended for a final destination yard. Also if you look at the table in goods train, you'll see that the EU network carries far less rail freight in terms of tonne-km, than either North America, Russian Federation or China, so there may not be enough traffic to justify long trains. Of course, we need sources to include this in either article. Do you have data on average EU train lengths?--agr (talk) 11:29, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Assuming wagons arrive or are sorted at a fixed rate (few long or many short arriving trains), it takes longer to assemble all wagons of a long departing train than to assemble all wagons of a short departing train, sending the remaining wagons on a second short train later the same day. Therefore, wagons leaving on long trains spend on average more time at a yard. Europe carries less tonne-km than other continents, but this is also because distances are much shorter on average, usually less than 400 km, because you're never far away from a seaport. Main routes may handle more than 40 goods trains per day in each direction, typically 400–750 metres in length at speeds of 95–115 km/h.
 * Unfortunately any hard numbers are diffucult to get, as operators and traffic control organisations tend to guard their data as if it were a risk to national security. PiusImpavidus (talk) 14:05, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

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US train lengths out-of-date?
Looks like UP is now running trains in excess of 15,000 ft., which the article seems to suggest would not be permissible. Something must have changed. Can a knowledgeable person update the article? see http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/04/29-union-pacific-moves-monster-loaded-coal-train-with-two-distributed-power-sets?fbclid=IwAR0UaBYD8kTW5kAcuan0mGLpNguqJmX9ZdbRGJ0jSRi4ei8FMMZBXQTS90E 108.4.12.158 (talk)

There should be an article on train length more generally
Imho the design parameters of railways as to permissible train length (e.g. Size of passing loops, platform lengths etc.) Should have their own article. Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:16, 29 June 2022 (UTC)