The Longest Trains in the World
Thursday, 1st November 2007 by Alex Turnbull
Despite being widely touted as the longest trains in the world, the up-to 2.5 kilometre-long freight trains which bring iron ore to Nouadhibou, Mauritania may not be particularly unique in their length.
On the day these images were captured, the longest train we can see at Nouadhibou (as measured with Google Earth's measuring tool) is approximately 1.97km long.
In the past we've seen some other extremely long trains, like these 2.2 kilometre-plus coal trains in Wyoming, and over in Pennsylvania there's a freight train which measures 2.98km from one end to the other - a whole kilometre longer than those in Mauritania.
However, all these trains could have been put to shame by the locomotives of Port Hedland, Western Australia - if only there had been any really long ones around when these images were taken.
Sadly, the longest I could find here was a distinctly average 2.2km, which falls far short of their longest ever, which purportedly consisted of 8 engines, 682 cars and totalled a staggering 7.3km - which quite probably would have made it the longest train of all time.
So, has anyone got a longer one to show us? 😀
For more like this, see our posts on Incredibly Long Trains and Bailey Yard. Thanks to Helge Fahrnberger, Romke Soldaat and the Keyhole users.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
I’m suffering from appalling load times at the moment, so I can’t offer you the link, but if you follow the railway eastwards from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK, it disappears into a sidings complex which appears to be several miles of redundant rolling stock.
A bit north of the rail facilities there are docked fishing boats which look strangely like leaves on trees.
check out this beached ship a few miles south:
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=20.771057,-17.044526&z=18
Of course for beached ships, this is the place to go: View Placemark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alang
@Glenn – In our Saharan Shipwrecks post from last year (where we featured tons of cool shipwrecks) a commenter linked to the same wreck you found, and included a link to an incredible ground level photo of that very wreck!
I’m not entirely convinced that that ground level photo is the same wreck … unless it shifted significantly between the two pictures. Looking at it in GE, any picture taking in the port side (as the ground level picture does) can’t really still have cliffs showing to the left of the bow. Also, as rocks and boulders in the GE image all cast long shadows, the rather large cross visible on the cliff-top in the ground level photo should be quite discernible … but I can’t find it.
I’d have to agree it’s not the same ship as in the ground photo. For one thing, the ground-photo ship is white, both on top and on the sides.