I work on the Indian-Pacific, Ghan and Overland Passanger Trains in Australia. Recently our Company has run the longest passenger trains in Australia. The Longest train we've ever run is 49 carraiges, (1.225 Kilometres or 0.7612 Miles) thats not including locomotives or motor rail.
Searching the internet the Eurostar claims to be the longest but only pulls 20 carraiges. Many Sites claim that Amtraks Autotrain is the worlds longest but doesn't qoute any lengths.
Does any one know what the new longest passenger train in the world was?
Posted by pedromorgan (Member # 4108) on :
eurostar is not the longest in the world buy a long way. the longest in the UK certainatly, but not the world.
Trains in uk actually cant get any longer withought serious upgrades to the signalling. the problem is that if the train was any longer, there are places where it would cover 2 track sections. this would show up on the control boards as a colisson!
Peter
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
While I can't speak of its normal consist, a look at the NTSB accident report for the April 18, 2002 Autotrain derailment in Florida tells us that the train was 40 cars long. (Source NTSB accident report NTSB/RAR-03/02) This consisted of two diesel units, 16 superliners and 24 auto carriers. The passenger portion broke down into 8 sleepers, 2 dining cars, 2 lounge cars, and 4 coaches. While I do not know the length of the diesels, the passenger cars are 85 feet long each and the autocarriers are probably between 85 feet and 89 feet long. If we take 70 feet each for the diesels and 85 feet each for everything else, we get 3,540 feet = 1079 meters. Therefore, your Australian train is longer. Which was it by the way, the Ghan or the Indian Pacific?
The British manage to maintain a lot of their records, particularly railroad related, by refusing to recognize the validity of the information quoted by anyone else, so all records they quote as holding I tend to take with a large grain of salt.
A 20 coach train would not even be in the running. It used to be quite common in the 50's and early 60's to see passenger trains of this length at busy travel periods on the Illinois Central, particularly the City of New Orleans or City of Miami. A normal winter time City of Miami that I saw on several occasions consisted of 4 diesels, a baggage car, 9 sleepers, 2 diners, 10 coaches and a round end observation. I was a passenger on the Easter Sunday 1963 City of New Orleans that left Memphis northbound with four diesels, RPO, baggage car, 22 coaches, diner, round end observation, total 26 cars plus diesels. I would suspect that Santa Fe also commonly ran pasenger trains of over 20 cars, but I have no first hand knowledge of that. We are not talking specials here, but scheduled trains.
Posted by GSR (Member # 4079) on :
Thanks for your responses guys muchly appreciated. The train I was referring to as being 48 carriages long was The Ghan (thats not inluding the two loco's or motorail) However I was corrected by a collegue who told me that recently The Overland (A Train run by the same company as The Ghan, Great Southern Railway) Went out this year with 49 carriages, however without any motorail carriages.
So far it does seem as though Great Southern Railway may hold the record, but who knows?!!!!
Thanks again guys and if anyone has any other information I would still be keen to hear!
Thanks again
George
Posted by U25B (Member # 4177) on :
Hello George(GSR) It seems everytime I get trackside in Melbourne I am there on the Overland's "off" day. I would love to see a 49 car Overland. Where are they hiding all the carriages for it? It would have been interesting to see how they handled it at Spencer Street when it arrived in Melbourne. Was that the Cup day special train? So many questions.......
Regards Wes
Posted by mr williams (Member # 1928) on :
How on earth does a 49 car passenger train work in practise? How many passengers can it carry? A 7 car HST in the UK has a capacity of about 350 - 400 but that is obviously all seated (no sleepers etc). How many on board crew are there?How many restaurant/cafe cars do you need, and are they all located in the same section (most long haul trains have the catering car between first and coach) or are they spread throughout the train? Imagine having to walk three-quarters of a mile to get your dinner!! I'm saving my frequent flyer miles for a return business class trip to Aus & NZ in (probably) 2008 or 2009 and am planning to take the Indian Pacific from east to west so I'm interested in hearing more about this.