Thread: Long Train

When I was working at BHP Yandi, the trains were regularly made up of three rakes each of 110 cars. In those days, they were still running the old Dash 8 loco's - used to be two (sometimes three) loco's at the front, another at the head of the second rake, and then another again at the head of the third rake.

We loaded each car at the time with 120 tonnes of iron ore, so payload was 39,600 tonnes per train, plus tare weight of cars (not sure what they weighed each) and weight of loco's.

Before I left there, we had increased loading to 125 tonnes per car (couldn't fit any more than this in as it would spill over the sides), they were changing to the new GE AC6000 loco's (and have since added the larger Canadian SD70ACe loco's) and were increasing the size of the crossing loops so that they could increase the length of the trains. I did hear of trains with around 600 cars on the main line from Newman to Hedland, but don't know if this was the case - and don't know what they are running now. However I believe that the BHP iron ore rail system still holds the record for the longest and heaviest trains in the world.

One of BHP's SD70ACe loco's.



Pannawonica - were you driving trains out there when Mesa A was commissioned - might have met you there if you were. I did all the training for the loadout (amongst other things). The driver who took the first loaded train out of Mesa A retired shortly after that - his brother was a member on here at the time, but haven't seen him here for a while now.

Yes I was there from the start !

You might recognize some in this photo .........

I have always been told that the reason for having loco's mid way back through the train is to keep the pull straight in winding terrain such as the Rocky Mountains etc.


cheers, Mick.

I drive for Pacific National Coal here in the Hunter Valley and the longest trains we have are around the 1550m in length with 92 wagons and some have 96 wagons (these wagons come to the same total length as the 92 long as the individual wagons are shorter with the same capacity)

We run 3 engines up front with a total mass of around 12,000T

They have looked at running 2 engines up front with 1 at the rear.

James.

Originally Posted by mick88

I have always been told that the reason for having loco's mid way back through the train is to keep the pull straight in winding terrain such as the Rocky Mountains etc.


cheers, Mick.

I gather there's a couple of reasons, one is that the drawgear of the locos and wagons aren't able to cope with the horsepower and load, so by distributing the power amongst the wagons the load is shared out.
I know back in the days of triple headed steamers and wooden wagons they'd occasionally pull the drawgear out of an elderly wagon if it was marshalled at the front of the train.