(The following story by Chuck Lentz appeared on the Grand Island Independent website on December 12, 2009.)
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — If some trains at railroad crossings and along Nebraska highways have seemed longer lately, you probably weren’t imagining things.
Without any fanfare, both Union Pacific and BNSF have gradually begun sending out longer trains — more than 8,000 feet, about one and a half miles, in length.
“There are no regulations regarding the length of a train,” said Mark Davis, U.P. director of corporate relations and media, in Omaha. There are, however, “a few operating guidelines we have to be mindful of — length of side or passing tracks, for one.”
Over the last year or so, long trains have been used on U.P.’s main line from Omaha through Grand Island to North Platte and beyond, Davis said. Many of them use “distributed power,” locomotives at the rear of the train as well as at the front, for better fuel economy.
The other main line passing through Grand Island and Central Nebraska, the BNSF line through York and Grand Island to Broken Bow and beyond, also has had longer trains.
Coal trains of 150-car (8,100-foot) length between Wyoming coal fields and Missouri have run since 2006, said Steve Forsberg, BNSF’s general director of public affairs.
“In January 2009, we started operating 13 additional trains that large to Kansas and to Texas,” Forsberg said. “Based on the turn times of the trains, that number of trains would average out to about four trains a day” through Central Nebraska on BNSF. Many BNSF trains also use distributed power.
Why are railroads moving to longer trains?
“It is simply more efficient to increase the size of existing trains where you can before creating a new, additional train,” Forsberg said.
Even longer trains can be found in other parts of the Great Plains.
According to an article by Fred Frailey in the current issue of Trains magazine, trains of 10,000 feet (almost two miles) in length are common on BNSF’s Chicago-Los Angeles main line through Kansas.
Frailey wrote that U.P.’s longest train, a container train that ran from Dallas to Southern California, was just short of 15,000 feet — almost three miles — in length.