Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.
Here is a great shot of a long train up in the wilds of Canada near to Saskatoon. My guestimation puts it at about 400 metres long. I can’t really tell what it is carrying as the trucks look to be covered. Anyone got any ideas?
Thanks: Saskboy
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almost def. coal if you ask me. Most trains that size are used for coal for power plants.
According to Google Earth’s measuring tool, the train is approximately 815 meters, or just over a half a mile.
Hi,
Thanks for posting my site suggestion. The rail cars could have coal in them, but there’s almost certainly grain cars in the mix too. If they are square topped they could be anything, but grain cars are mostly cylindrical with ports at the top flattening the upper part a little bit. Amonia cars are possible too, as they are used for fertilizer production. I’m not certain if the line is owned by Canadian Pacific or Canadian National, but maybe someone who knows Canada’s rail system better could tell us what the likely cargo is.
Only 46 cars? (yes, I counted) That’s considered small in Saskatchewan. I spent a few weeks motorcycle touring through Saskatchewan and it wasn’t uncommon to see trains with 100 cars or more.
Here’s one just to the south with 80 cars…
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Also, the cars could be carrying a variety of materials. Most common around these parts are grain, lumber coal and petroleum products. Hard to tell from this far above, but I would guess the black cars to be either coal or petroleum tankers, and the others to most likely be grain hoppers, such as these…
http://image06.webshots.com/6/4/34/43/97943443RMjaUr_ph.jpg
This is no ‘big train’. It looks to be 46 cars long (two of which may be locomotives). I see trains much longer than that all the time here in Windsor, Ontario.
As for the cargo, there may be a clue in the small rail yard to the east
Near Chicago we have trains that can stretch well over a mile, especially on Union Pacific or BNSF lines.
If you follow the train to the East, there is a siding with a grain elevator (for loading grain onto trains), plus one or two agricultural fields here:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Coal trains do not normally have covered tops, and are not normally double height railcars.
In a toy sized country like the UK that train would be considered pretty huge!
Babaganoosh, that train in the link isn’t one train, it’s many cars stored together. There are at least two gaps, where there are roads crossing the tracks, and there are no locomotives visible to me.
Just because a train is near grain elevators, doesn’t necessarily mean it is transporting grain. They all have to use the same tracks.
P.S. I like the new layout but what’s up with the large, gray blank space to the right of the “Google maps links?”
Also, there appears to be a bit of a bug with the ads and the last comment.
Babaganoosh: have you tried shift-refreshing the page? If so and the problem persists what OS/browser are you running?
^–Ok, never mind, both glitches seem to have magically been fixed.
Saskboy: You are correct. I just figured they were storing the cars there and split them up to allow for traffic. I certainly could be wrong though.
Anyways, here’s a 100 car train in New York…
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
And about a 130 car train in Cleveland…
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Saskatoon, gotta be grain.
Not quite as long as the Cleveland train above, but some interesting context. This 95 car train is right next to a GE Locomotive (the sign in front actually used to say “Electro-Motive” plant in suburban Chicago (McCook IIRC). I don’t think it’s been in operation for some time, but if you zoom in and follow the tracks you can see tracks that lead into the grounds. This place used to be a ton bigger, but around the mid to late 90’s I beleive GE shuttered most operations here and moved them to their Ontario plant. They razed alot of the factory and subdivided the land. The three warehose buildings at the corner of East and 55th (turn on Hybrid to see) were constructed in their place. I still remember we I moved to the area the first time I drove by this place. It was one of the largest industrial operations I’d seen.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Last night with Firefox I was having trouble loading the site, all pages were blank. This morning 8AM GMT -7 everything is working alright.
There is a 137 car train near Regina, Sask here
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
to
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
That’s over 8000 ft long according the Google maps!!
800 meters
If you look at the cars in the front, you will see some tan patches on the top. Those are indicative of spilled grain around the top hatches of the cars. The next cars in the train (the black cars) have domes on top, making them tank cars of some sort.
Not really the “wilds of Canada”…
But neat.
That is a “unit” grain train. Those are “covered hoppers” that store the grain. These trains are the primary commodity and main permise in Canada.
I’ll confirm that in Saskatchewan, we’re almost definitely talking about grain, particularly in the multicolored carriages, or possibly potash, which is mined extensively in that province. The black carriages with the darker area in their centres are likely carrying oil (if they were white it would be ammonia or something like that). Coal is much less likely - it wouldn’t be worth transporting from British Columbia or Alberta to Ontario or Quebec, when each of those provinces have their own. And apparently Saskatchewan uses 90% of its coal in the province. I’ve only seen trains carrying coal in BC anyways.
100 or so carriages would be much more typical, by the way. I regularly see trains in Alberta with five or even six locomotives pulling, and extra locomotives pushing from the back or the middle. This is particularly common on CP lines out here, although they apparently have begun shortening them down in the mountains of BC now due to safety concerns.
For comparison, here’s a ~75 carriage train west of Calgary, AB.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Guiness World Records
“Longest Freight Train: The longest train ever was 7.353 km (4.568 miles) long, and consisted of 682 ore cars pushed by 8 powerful diesel-electric locomotives. Assembled by BHP Iron Ore, the train travelled 275 km (171 miles) from the company’s Newman and Yandi mines to Port Hedland, Western Australia, on June 21st, 2001.”
I was pretty sure they were big in the west, bigger than texas.
Can anyone find them
I regularly see 130 car Potash trains passing here with 2 locomotives on the head end and another in the middle helping…
There’s one over 1.5 miles long and ~130 cars here:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth