Saw an engine running backwards in the middle of a train.
Two engines at the head and one in the middle.
Longest train I ever remember seeing.
Anyone else see such a train?

Sometimes see 3-4 pulling engines with one in the middle.

Yep.

When I was a kid and we’d see an engine hooked up backwards my dad would tell us they are just winding that one up for the return trip. lol

I guess out west, there maybe a bigger need for them.
In the east not so much?

When I was a kid we’d call a train with an engine and a caboose a “train”. If it had an extra engine in the middle we’d call it a “freight train”. Not sure how that got started. Freight trains were always way longer.

I've seen it. It's called a DPU.

I see it al lot in this area.

Modern diesel/electric engines run equally efficiently in either direction. Putting a train engine in the middle or the end reduces stress on the car couplers by pulling some of the load and pushing some of the load.

I see that pretty often when I see trains. The engines run just as well backwards as forwards. It can be a hassle to turn an engine around in a tight train yard, so often back up engines in the middle are just used which ever way they are already facing.

Keith

Engineer buddy of mine who's route went over the horseshoe bend.. If they had a long or heavy train they'd get a helper so he didn't "shoestring" the train as he called it, on the uphill pull around the corner.


In other words, they can pull cars towards the front off the tracks on a corner because of the weight of the rear cars so a pusher was required.

Here a lot of the coal trains are 2 or 3 engines on the front and a pusher at the end.

Yep. There's a mountain in bc that it'll cross over itself. Pretty neat stuff to deal with trains. Like they sprinkle sand on the track to give it traction. I've also been told that one year the grasshoppers were so bad that the trains would spin out. My dad worked for the power corporation. He said in the event of a shtf moment they had plans to use dozers to pull a locomotive to a spot where they'd use the diesel electric generation to power critical infrastructure.

This is common for coal trains coming up from Gillette Wyo to have 1 or at times 2 pusher engines to get them over Aberdeen Hill as it's all up hill from Sheridan Wyoming to Billings Montana .
These coal trains normally can be 1 1/2 miles long and each car is loaded with 225.000 lbs of coal which takes less than,a minute to load each car with coal as once it starts moving / loading chances are they don't stop it until it reaches it's destination .