# What is the longest passenger train you've ever seen?



## jackal (Mar 19, 2009)

I took a trip on the Alaska Railroad's winter Aurora Train from Anchorage to Fairbanks this last Saturday. Normally, the Aurora train is three cars long: a dining car, one coach car, and a baggage car on the rear (where the people hauling supplies to their remote cabins and availing themselves of the flag stop service hang out--fascinating look into real Alaska!).

Mine was over ten times that!

I'll have to consult my photos to see what the actual car count was, but it was something like this:

*SD70MAC engine

*SD70MAC engine

*SD70MAC engine

*Baggage car

*Coach

*Ex-UP dome

*Coach

*Coach

*Tiki Rail Bar

*Dining car

*HEP power car

*Dining car

*Coach

*Coach

*Baggage car

But that wasn't the end of it! Behind the baggage car were about 10 flat cars and another 15 tank cars!

The Alaska Railroad's VP/COO Ernie Piper was on-board and announced that this was a historic event for the Alaska Railroad and one they had obtained a special waiver from the FRA for combining freight and passenger equipment on the same train. Apparently due to an emergency need of one of the railroad's customers, the railroad needed to get the freight cars to Fairbanks ASAP. On top of that, the eight passenger cars in front of the normal dining car and our two coaches were empty and being repositioned for a special Fairbanks to Anchorage charter of an international marketing delegation (they weren't accessible to us).

At over 40 cars long, this was one of the longest "passenger" trains I'd ever seen!

I'm not sure why they didn't simply run the freight as a separate train either just ahead of or just behind our passenger train. Perhaps they were short available crews or engines and consolidating the run was the only way they could get everything up to Fairbanks on time. Interestingly, we were limited to freight speeds (49mph in the 59/49 segments) and freight air brake pressure (90psi instead of 110psi), and this plus our delayed departure while we hooked onto our freight equipment (yes, we actually made a joint with all of the passengers on board--all we felt was a very slight jolt) meant that our arrival into Fairbanks was about 45 minutes late.

One of the most interesting passenger trips I think I'll ever be on!

When I get my pics downloaded, I'll post some.


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## jis (Mar 19, 2009)

A train with that many freight cars would normally be called a "Mixed Train" I should think.

As for pure passenger trains, I think the longest that I have seen is a 30 car Canadian + 3 F40s (or whatever they are called in Canada)

Of course there are many trains in India that regularly run with 24 cars every day, which I have seen (e.g. Poorva Express) + a single electric motor. Some allegedly go upto as many as 26, but which I have not personally seen one of those.


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## Bill Haithcoat (Mar 19, 2009)

jis said:


> A train with that many freight cars would normally be called a "Mixed Train" I should think.
> As for pure passenger trains, I think the longest that I have seen is a 30 car Canadian + 3 F40s (or whatever they are called in Canada)
> 
> Of course there are many trains in India that regularly run with 24 cars every day, which I have seen (e.g. Poorva Express) + a single electric motor. Some allegedly go upto as many as 26, but which I have not personally seen one of those.



Count me in for your second paragraph, a 30 car Canadian.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Mar 19, 2009)

How long is the typical Auto Train?


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## p&sr (Mar 19, 2009)

Bill Haithcoat said:


> Count me in for your second paragraph, a 30 car Canadian.


Ditto.


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## Sam31452 (Mar 19, 2009)

In Europe the maximum is about 14 cars (each measuring 26.4 metres), limited by the platform length.

In Europe high speed trains (running at a speed of 250 km/h or more) are limited to a length of 400 metres.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Mar 20, 2009)

Sam31452 said:


> In Europe the maximum is about 14 cars (each measuring 26.4 metres), limited by the platform length.


That sounds like a 1200' platform, which I think is a bit longer than is typical in the US.


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## the_traveler (Mar 20, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> How long is the typical Auto Train?


IIRC, the AT runs about 45 cars - including both pax and car carriers.


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## jis (Mar 20, 2009)

Just out of idle curiosity I look for the ratio between cars that carry passenger accommodation vs. other support cars like baggage, restaurant/diner, lounge etc.

I think on an average the Canadian has about 1 support car for 2 passenger carrying cars. On an average its sleeper portion is organized as a set of train segments, each 6 cars long of which 4 are Manor/Chateau sleepers with one diner and one skyline dome supporting them. Plus there is baggage and one or two coaches and a Skyline up front and the Park obs/dome+sleeper bringing up the rear.

A typical Amtrak train has 6 or 7 passenger carrying cars plus 3 or so support cars (diner, lounge, baggage), which makes it about the same ratio.

NEC Regionals have one support car and 6 or 7 passenger carrying cars. An Acela set has 5 passenger carrying cars and one support car.

The aforementioned 24 car train in India has 3 or 4 support cars (2 Baggage/Guard and one or two Pantry cars) and 20 or 21 passenger carrying cars. The more luxurious Rajdhani Express has 12 or 13 passenger carrying cars and 3 to 4 support cars (2x Baggage/Generator/Brake/Guard and one or two Pantry Cars)

European HS trains basically have one support car per train segment, and there are some 6 to 8 passenger carrying cars per train segment.

I traveled on the Langkawi Express from Kuala Lumpur to Butterworth and the International Express from Butterworth to Bangkok sometime back and both appeared to have some 12 or 14 passenger carrying cars and 3 or so support cars.

Leo Tolstoy from Helsinki to Moscow was some 10 passenger carrying cars and 3 support cars upto Vyborg, and from there it got an additional 6 or 8 cars tacked onto its tail. Don't know if they were all passenger cars or there were any support cars too. I would guess that there was perhaps one baggage car in the lot.

All of this suggests that LD trains in North America are relatively luxuriously appointed. I believe LD trains in Australia are similarly luxuriously appointed, but I could be wrong.

Any experiences, observations, thoughts along these lines would be most appreciated.


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## jackal (Mar 21, 2009)

jis said:


> All of this suggests that LD trains in North America are relatively luxuriously appointed. I believe LD trains in Australia are similarly luxuriously appointed, but I could be wrong.


By my best memory, the Countrylink XPT between Sydney and Brisbane (actually, Casino, since the daytime train doesn't go all the way to BNE) had about five (give or take one) coaches plus a half [first-class] coach/half cafe car. It had two locomotives (one at each end); I didn't notice a separate baggage car even though the train accepts checked baggage, so perhaps one of the locos was a cabbage (or perhaps I was just blind).

The Queenslander was a fairly lengthy train--at least five or six sleepers (single-, double-, and triple-bed rooms) plus another four or five coaches. The support cars consisted of a power car (for HEP, since there was only one locomotive; it was interestingly on the rear), bag car, restaurant car, cafe car, and a single auto carrier flat car on the rear.

From what I've seen, the Ghan and Indian Pacific trains are extremely long and do have multiple dining cars as well as auto carriers.

The point to my OP was less about the train's length than it was a way to brag about being on a very rare mixed passenger/freight train...


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## Joel N. Weber II (Mar 21, 2009)

I think there's a bit of difference between lounge/cafe/dining cars vs HEP generators and baggage cars. HEP generators certainly don't add luxury, they just reflect a decision to not put the generator in the locomotive. And the traditional Amtrak baggage car reflects cheapness in car construction, in the sense that it appears that a baggage/dorm car would still have plenty of space for the baggage. And if you're going to count baggage as support car, make sure you remember to count coach/baggage Superliners as partial support cars.

How you count the lounge car on #448/#449 is also an interesting question, as it used to be half revenue seating. Well, a bit less than half, since the counter is (I think) at the center of the car, and only half the non-counter area had Business Class seating.


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## jis (Mar 22, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> I think there's a bit of difference between lounge/cafe/dining cars vs HEP generators and baggage cars. HEP generators certainly don't add luxury, they just reflect a decision to not put the generator in the locomotive. And the traditional Amtrak baggage car reflects cheapness in car construction, in the sense that it appears that a baggage/dorm car would still have plenty of space for the baggage. And if you're going to count baggage as support car, make sure you remember to count coach/baggage Superliners as partial support cars.
> How you count the lounge car on #448/#449 is also an interesting question, as it used to be half revenue seating. Well, a bit less than half, since the counter is (I think) at the center of the car, and only half the non-counter area had Business Class seating.


I guess the most accurate way to measure the "luxury index" of a train would be to divide the number of passengers that it can carry with the number of cars that provide for the passengers on the train directly or indirectly, and use that as an index of what proportion of a car is devoted to each passenger. The larger the number, the more luxurious the train. That automatically would take account of most legitimate issues raised above by Mr. Weber.


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## ALC Rail Writer (Mar 22, 2009)

Well-- what if you limit the train to JUST pax or pax service cars? No car carriers or freight. Just baggage, lounge, diner, coach, sleeper, engines.


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## George Harris (Apr 7, 2009)

In the mid 1960's Southern Railway ran a lot of their passenger trains with piggyback flats on the back. It was quite common in that time frame for the Tennessean (Memphis to Washington DC) to leave the Memphis station with two coaches, one sleeper, and 3 to 10 head end cars, then stop opposite the freight yard and have 6 to 10 up to 13 on one trip I took piggyback flats tacked on. All switching done while cars are occupied. When the train got to Chattanooga, the piggybacks were uncoupled outside the station and the train backed into the station. Most of them went to Atlanta, or so I was told, as usually there would only be a couple put on the train when it left Chattanooga.

For pure passenger trains, the City of New Orleans on occasion would get up to 20 cars or a few more. Usually that would be 3 or 4 diesels on the front, 2 head end cars, RPO, baggage, and a diner and an observation car with the rest being coaches. The winteretime City of Miami would also go over 20 cars, generally about half of them sleepers.


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## jackal (Apr 8, 2009)

Got an email from my friend who is a conductor on the ARR the other day, and she said, "You were part of history on that psgr/frt train you know!" 

Apparently it was done to save the cost of the crew. (I doubt there was much fuel savings by running them together, given the two extra engines were on the point anyhow.) At $33 per hour, the 12-hour run would have cost the company $924 for the engineer and conductor (over $1,000 with payroll taxes and all the other things that the employer pays on top of hourly wages). If no extra-board crews were under the guarantee and no available crews weren't otherwise scheduled for less than 40 hours that week--the most likely scenario--the movement would have cost (with taxes) over $1,200 for the railroad.

With the financial struggles the railroad's biggest customer, Flint Hills Resources (and their North Pole refinery), is having and the lower loads resulting, the railroad is trying to cut expenses as best they can. They've cut 80 jobs this year (mostly management) and are in a hiring freeze (no new brakemen to help cover the uptick in summer traffic), and this was just one more small thing to help with that. I wonder if it will start happening more often...


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