Longest train you personally counted.

I lost count at more than sixty once looking out at a train in the distance from the porch, to far to make out much more than that is an engine, or boxcar with the naked eye still fun to watch them roll by.

     In my part of railroad routes, they are shorter, doing local drop offs & pickups, but we do get some longer coal trains going to power plants, north to Flint & Saginaw Michigan. The auto racks are going south towards Ohio from the two large car plants in Dearborn & Wayne, Michigan. The auto racks & coal trains are the long ones, about 120 cars.

     When I go to Las Vegas, I like to watch them build those large Union Pacific Trains going east from my Hotel Room.

154, near Manassas, VA, back a few years ago.

MoPac running on trackage rights thru Lubbock, TX on ATSF Slaton division in the 1970's: 2 SD-40's pulling 256 cars and a caboose.

TrainroomGary & I are kinda near each other. Id say he has it about right.

But about 4 years ago I was stuck at an NS crossing nearby metro Detroit airport. Eastbound run, and I will swear it had over 200 easy. Mostly empty auto-loading cars returning to the D. The most I had seen on one train since the 1970's trains going west full of shiny Pintos, and Mustang II's. I started counting very very late, and simply because of the length. Still got to 65 loaders, and a caboose! Guestimate 220-ish.  

It's hard for me to count them in the dark.  

Kent in SD

Years ago  in the Southern Pacific glory years. I was fortunate enough to view a North bound sugar beet drag. It was being pulled by 6 Geeps in Black Widow paint. There was 347 high side beet cars and a lonely caboose. I remember just how clean every locomotive was and even the caboose.

God Bless,

"Pappy"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

I rarely count cars. I generally just looked at the train makeup sheet the Engineer had.

I'm pretty lucky, I live over the CSX main. I get to watch coal drags, grain cars, mysterious chemical tank cars, and lots of automobile loaders and parts cars.

Longest are the coal drags... some over 100+.

On the former BNSF branchline that runs through our neighborhood I regularly count 130 car trains but the last one was 95 cars.  These trains are unit trains of all covered hoppers carrying silica sand.  Engine count ranges from 3 to 6 and I'm not sure if the larger count is shuttling engines back and forth?

Art 

The longest steam train that I ever counted was a 218 car eastbound train of 40 ton loaded coal hoppers about 10 miles east of Portsmouth, OH, in August, 1958, and pulled by N&A A #1222. I wrote the number of cars on the slide...the train and the terrain (curves) made it too long to photograph, so I just photographed the engine coming and going...

The longest train that I counted in the early diesel age was 256 empty hoppers on the NYC at Erie, pulled by two F7's. I thought at that time that they would never get to Cleveland, as soon as they went through transition the speed would drop back and they would work at it again. I am sure that this train never took a siding, as NYC did not have any that were long enough...

The most severe application I ever rode was an adhesion test on CSX with two AC4400's, R/Nos 1 and 2) on Cranberry Grade, followed by 50 loaded ballast cars and two Dash 8's for downhill braking back to the bottom of the hill. The minimum speed was so low that I could count the individual ballast stones going under the rear end plate of the second unit. (I can't remember all of the details, but think we got down under 1 mph when the train was wrapped around the three severe curves near the top.) The Test crew assured me that this was not normal operation...

I was going to spend some time out there, until it occurred to me that if the knuckle failed, I might have "shrapnel" to deal with.....

The record is still held by the country of Australia who lashed up some AC6000's and a huge amount of cars. I don't have the info right in front of me, but one can Google AC6000 and you will see the stats for yourself. Massive amount of power and I imagine, an awe inspiring site as well for those Down Under......

Pete

PS....200 plus is allot. I believe I have seen a you tube video of this, but cannot remember what it came under.

Pete

272 loaded coal cars pulled by three SD-40's,twice,according to my wheel report.

 I ran one from Williamson,WV  to Portsmouth,Oh once,then Cyrus,WV to Portsmouth,Oh the second time.

 I've watched a 284 car loaded coal train once,and got stuck behind a 343 car empty (coal) hopper train .Had to follow that crazy thing all the way from Kenova,WV to Williamson,WV.