atlas O Scale Gunderson

You have to have an A/B set, because A and B are the ends. Without the A/B set you have no couplers to connect the train together. The 5 car set goes together A/E/D/C/B.

Actually, I think the OP's question is more along the lines of can he configure a very, very long chain of Atlas-O Gunderson cars with only ONE pair of A/B units...

such as A/E/D/C/E/D/C/B.

And the answer is "yes".  This can be done with MTH Gunderson cars as well.  Obviously, things can get a bit unwieldy with one extremely long set of cars, since you're only able to uncouple the long string (from adjacent cars) at the A and B units.

David

Robert,

I don't see why this couldn't be done. 

All five cars in a five car sets do, however, carry the same car number, although the numbers on the C,D, E cars is much smaller than on the A,B cars.

I, personally have two five car sets and an additional A/B set for a total of 12 cars.

Prototypically, my understanding is that the railroads would have run only five car sets.

All of my cars are the yellow TTX, but on my newer two car set, the yellow paint isn't as dark as the earlier production cars.

Also, be aware that you will have to purchase the containers separately.  The downside is they usually run about $20 each, the upside is that there is a very large selection of container available.

I think that Atlas did a great job with the Gundersons and am very happy with mine.

Jim