> But long trains are definitely more efficient, especially when they only have one type of cargo and all the cars are going to the same place. For one thing, t

> But long trains are definitely more efficient, especially when they only have one type of cargo and all the cars are going to the same place. For one thing, the short trains need a lot more conductors and engineers than the single long train does. I’ll believe this when I see a real analysis, and only when I see a real analysis. A long train is huge, and revenue per long train net of fuel seems likely to be quite high. Notably, I expect it to be dramatically higher than the cost of even the number of conductors and engineers needed to run several short trains. (Conductors and engineers are not well paid.) The tradeoff is that a long train fails if any of the cars fails, so the actual availability of a long train falls exponentially with length. (Which is “mitigated” by what appear to be rather poor, perhaps intentionally poor, inspection practices on the parts of the rail companies, thus allowing long trains with malfunctioning cars to continue to operate.) I would expect shorter trains to be more economical with all costs considered, especially if signaling and safety systems were upgraded to allow more efficient scheduling.