Introduction

Trains

Rail Lines

Ports

Trains

Coal unit train waiting to depart. Courtesy of Fording Coal Ltd.

In the 1960’s, railroads made important changes to the ways they carried freight like coal. One of the biggest changes that they made was to introduce unit trains. These long train sets carried huge volumes of only one kind of freight and travelled back and forth between the same two points over and over again. Trains did not stop along the way to pick up or drop off other cars which made them very efficient.¹

Coal trains traveling between the Elk Valley mines and their unloading ports near Vancouver worked this way. About 100 coal cars were joined to a powerful locomotive. Each car could carry about 100 tonnes of coal, with each train carrying close to 100 000 tonnes of coal.²

The distance from the coal mines to the sea ports was between 1000 and 1200 kilometres. It took each train three days to travel this far and back. Part of the three days was spent loading and unloading coal. It only took about four hours to fill all the train cars at the mines and another four to empty all of the cars at the ports.^3,4

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