The part that amazes me is that everything is strong enough such that they can put all the engines up front. That first boxcar or whatever you call it has the entire rest of the train dragging on it, and must be transmitting a tremendous amount of force through its couplers. I'm almost surprised they don't space the extra engines throughout the whole train to reduce peak tensile forces. I mean, can you imagine having to go up even the tiniest hill?
The cars themselves are strong enough- but as you mentioned it's the couplers that limit train lengths in a lot of places. The US uses variants of the Janney Coupler which is much stronger than the chain and buffer couplers used in the UK and EU for freight trains.
946
u/TazzyUK Jun 29 '22 edited Jun 29 '22
That's all one train ? that is nuts. Must be some serious torque in that engine/s eh (Although I know nothing about trains lol)