axles, how many ?

how many axles in a mile? 400? 500?

Depends on what type of car you're talking about..........and this is not the right forum to pose such a question.

[Since this has nothing to do with New York State, it has been moved to General Discussion: Locomotives, Rolling Stock, and Equipment. - omv]

As Charlie points out, it depends on the type(s) of car.

~50' cars - a little over 400.

A solid train of Automax cars - around 180, plus the motive power.

The train I heard hit the defect detector at Whitesboro, NY the other day - 361. Not sure if it was a mile long or not, but it was apparently either missing an axle or had a C-Liner for motive power...

An average freight train with 400 or more axles is a good bet to be alittle over a mile. If it's got a bunch of those smaller vovered hoppers like GNWR salt cars, then it'll be a bit smaller. A Container train with near 400 axles is pushing the 14,000 ft limit. Biggest I've handled so far was 678 axles on Q626 about 5 months ago close to 9,000 ft long. I have also ran a couple of 13,900 ft. container trains in the past year. Neither gets any where close to track speed. The occasional odd numbered count from a detector is usually due to the detector counting the plow which may be hanging a bit lower than it should.

That, or there was an FL9 in transit somewhere. I caught a couple being shipped ages ago, but with Amtrak selling theirs and MN downgrading them, it's a lot less common than it used to be.

roadster wrote:The occasional odd numbered count from a detector is usually due to the detector counting the plow which may be hanging a bit lower than it should ...

and flat spots on wheels, straps/tiedowns hanging too low (but not low enough to trip a dragging equipment alarm), etc..

figure 1 mile is 5280 feet on land. Or 6076 feet in a nautical mile if on a boat or ship. In this case were talking about a railroad mile which is what?? What ever they say is a mile in there terms is as long or as short as they want to make it. The proof is in the R.R. train crew Time table listings.

The average Iron Ore train on the Quebec, North shore, & Labrador Railroad have had up to 1,060 axles (with out counting 6 axle SD40's or 6 Axle GE's) this makes out to be 265 ore cars at about 70 tons each. Each car is about 25 or 30 feet in length.