The Guiness World Book of records has an entry for the world’s longest train. On June 12th, 2001 a train travelled from an Australian mine for 275 kilometres (172 miles) from Newman to Port Hedland, Australia carrying iron ore. It had eight GE AC6000 diesel electric engines distributed along a 7.3 kilometre (4.6 mile) train with 682 ore cars. The train weighed almost 100,000 tons and carried over 82,000 tonnes of ore. BHP Billiton Iron Ore ran this train to test their “locotrol” system which allows a series of locomotives to be evenly placed along the length of the train to make such a long train possible. Only one driver was used to operate the train.
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If you have the patience, you can watch the train take eight minutes to pass by clicking the video below (You may want to turn the music down!). Or you can click on this link to watch a shorter professionally produced video about this record breaking train.
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Wikipedia offers much information on the world’s longest and heaviest trains. They note that the world’s longest passenger trains were assembled for charity events and were up to 70 cars in length. Learn more by clicking here.
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Posting by Russ Milland
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