Assume you can hook every locomotive and car Union Pacific owns up into a single gigantic freight train. Safety and laws aside, would it work?
In: Physics
You’ll have to space the locomotives as equally as possible to distribute the pulling and braking loads or else the stress on the first non-powered car will be tremendous, perhaps even destructive. The mega train would operate somewhat like a series of shorter trains loosely connected together yet operating in sync. The total mass would still make getting it up to speed and much less braking a real tough challenge.
Then you’ll have to deal with level crossings and track switches as the mega train will be occupying it for very long amounts of time that you’ll have to have alternative routes. Then the next limitation is how long your rail sidings are – kinda pointless to have a mega-train stretching far beyond what a load/unloading facility can accommodate. Even if you separate individual cars to be un/loaded and serviced, that would still involve stopping the entire train ever so often which ruins the timings and the profitability of the concept.
TLDR: A mega train in itself is not an insurmountable engineering challenge per se, but the limitations of the other cogs in the rail system and the economics of the whole thing would likely preclude it from happening.
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