Light & fast
Fast for a freight train, anyway.
A shot from the archives, something I've dredged up mainly because of coming across a few factoids that seem like a perfect match to go with the image.
It's an empty coal train passing through Huntsville on Norfolk Southern rails. After delivering its load of low-sulfur western coal to a huge power plant in central Georgia, it's on the way back to the Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming, where it'll be reloaded and the round trip will begin all over again.
There's a fascinating story here, and writer John McPhee did a great job putting it down on paper, in a 2-part series published by The New Yorker in October 2005.
"This 1,800-mile haul on Union Pacific and two other railroads is the nation's longest unit-train coal run."
-- from a Union Pacific SEC filing, 11-9-94
The most noteworthy thing about the coal train business, it seems to me, is that it can actually be economically viable to haul thousands of tons of coal that far, and then -- with the same three locomotives that were necessary to drag such a string of fully loaded hoppers -- pull all those empty cars 1,800 miles back to the starting point. But it is viable. The railroads are making money these days, while competing transport industries struggle to stay afloat.
"If you're pulling empties, a north wind can take you from 50 miles per hour to 18," Scott said.
-- Union Pacific engineer Scott Davis, quoted in McPhee's article
Coal trains like this pass through here several times a day, hitting the 50-mph speed limit when they're empty and slowing almost to a crawl when they're eastbound, since you then have to pull a significant grade on the way out of town.
Norfolk Southern operates the trains from Memphis to Plant Scherer in Georgia, but NS does so under a subcontract with Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which now has the big contract to haul Powder River coal for Georgia Power.
BTW, the key reason why this long haul business does make sense economically is that low-sulfur coal from Wyoming allows big coal-fired power plants to meet EPA emission requirements -- without use of scrubbers. Coal from eastern mines, while conveniently close, has high sulfur content.
Light & fast
Fast for a freight train, anyway.
A shot from the archives, something I've dredged up mainly because of coming across a few factoids that seem like a perfect match to go with the image.
It's an empty coal train passing through Huntsville on Norfolk Southern rails. After delivering its load of low-sulfur western coal to a huge power plant in central Georgia, it's on the way back to the Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming, where it'll be reloaded and the round trip will begin all over again.
There's a fascinating story here, and writer John McPhee did a great job putting it down on paper, in a 2-part series published by The New Yorker in October 2005.
"This 1,800-mile haul on Union Pacific and two other railroads is the nation's longest unit-train coal run."
-- from a Union Pacific SEC filing, 11-9-94
The most noteworthy thing about the coal train business, it seems to me, is that it can actually be economically viable to haul thousands of tons of coal that far, and then -- with the same three locomotives that were necessary to drag such a string of fully loaded hoppers -- pull all those empty cars 1,800 miles back to the starting point. But it is viable. The railroads are making money these days, while competing transport industries struggle to stay afloat.
"If you're pulling empties, a north wind can take you from 50 miles per hour to 18," Scott said.
-- Union Pacific engineer Scott Davis, quoted in McPhee's article
Coal trains like this pass through here several times a day, hitting the 50-mph speed limit when they're empty and slowing almost to a crawl when they're eastbound, since you then have to pull a significant grade on the way out of town.
Norfolk Southern operates the trains from Memphis to Plant Scherer in Georgia, but NS does so under a subcontract with Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which now has the big contract to haul Powder River coal for Georgia Power.
BTW, the key reason why this long haul business does make sense economically is that low-sulfur coal from Wyoming allows big coal-fired power plants to meet EPA emission requirements -- without use of scrubbers. Coal from eastern mines, while conveniently close, has high sulfur content.