Going the distance with this train. Three flared SD70MAcs what were the trailing units.
|
That's somewhat ironic. Attempting to efficient and cost effective, they have 13 passenger cars, each seating under 10 people, and 3 SD70MAC's pulling 30 cars.
|
Just a quick rebuttal to Alex's comments. The normal weekend passenger train is 1 coach, 1 diner, and 2 baggage cars. This weekend it was increased with the addition of a second coach since each one seats on 78 people. The other 8 passenger cars were actually deadheading north account the following day a charter with 200+ Japanese tourists would be riding south. So in effect this was three trains in one. A revenue passenger train, a revenue freight train, and a deadheading set of passenger equipment. While it looks like three units, it's actually only 2.5 since the rear SD70MAC is supplying Head End Power and hence only has one powered truck. The train weighed over 3000 tons so that is only about 3.6 HPT which is not unreasonable. That is far less than the HPT ratio of many of the UP or BNSF's hottest Z trains and far less than any of Amtrak's corridor trains, though I admit that isn't a fair comparison.
|
|