Like any form of transportation, trains come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. For public transport purposes, more riders means more fares and more revenue, so it’s a matter of accommodating as many people as possible. If you frequently travel on some of the busiest subway systems in the world, such as New York City or London, you will know how busy and limited such circumstances can be. Meanwhile, freight trains take a rather different direction. They don’t carry people, but a wide range of different goods, and are often the safest and most direct way to do so. They may even have to take some of the longest train lines in the world during their assignments.
It may be the case that the more loaded a train is, the fewer the trips and the higher the profit, but depending on the type of freight carried, this may not be a problem. A freight train may be almost indistinguishable from a passenger car in terms of size, or may be much smaller or larger. Some of the biggest freight trains on the planet, unsurprisingly, are more specialized designs, created for a specific route and purpose. These trains are large enough to make even the formidable Union Pacific Big Boy seem quite a sensible and modest size.
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BHP iron ore transport train
A BHP Iron Ore freight train turning a corner. – Bahnfrend/Wikimedia Commons
Australia’s sheer size and the difficult terrain for which the country is well known means that transport can be a significant challenge. There are some jobs for which even Australia’s powerful road trains are not ideal. The key in such cases is to make races as profitable as possible. One way to do this is to ensure that the cargo carrying capacity is as high as possible. In the early 2000s, BHP Iron Ore clearly understood this fact. Guinness World Records reports that his train, made of a total of eight AC6000 CW models designed by General Electric, was the longest freight train in the world. It consisted of a total of 5,648 wheels and weighed a total of 99,732 metric tons.
BHP boasts that it was the designer of not only the longest freight train, but also the largest and heaviest train to ever exist. The complete setup stretched just over 4.5 miles and, as expected of the company, it was tasked with transporting iron ore. An absolutely outrageous amount of it, in fact, at around “82,262.5 wet metric tonnes”, according to BHP. Of course, such a monstrous train would only be practical for use on a long journey, and that’s exactly what it was before the whole iron ore thing. It required a journey that took her “over a 275 kilometer segment of the journey from Newman to Port Hedland”. Newman, or Newman Operations, is a site in the Pilbara, a region of Australia that runs up the west coast. Here, in two different mining areas, an absolutely extraordinary amount of iron ore is extracted from the ground. In 2023, BHP reports that 257 million tonnes of iron ore have been extracted from the sites.
Cargo boats of the Carajás Railway in Brazil
A Brazilian freight train passing along the track. – YouTube/No Trilho
Nations other than Australia also face the challenge of transporting large supplies of cargo over long distances over difficult terrain. Brazil also handles large amounts of iron ore. In the South American country, prominent ore mines are found in the north in Pará, so a transport network had to be developed to make the most of them. This transport network would be the Carajás railway, and along with passenger services, hosts some enormous freight trains. They transport the precious iron ore to São Marcos Bay, São Luís, but inevitably all this industrial activity has had a strong impact on the surrounding land and its inhabitants. As Greenpeace’s Unearthed reported in July 2022, the 600-mile railway is traversed by these mighty freighters 35 times a day, at all hours, and they really are monstrous trains: each two miles long and carrying loads of iron ore of around 40,000 tonnes.
Between 2010 and 2017, the outlet reports, 53 people were confirmed to have been killed by cargo ships while crossing because the line lacked proper crossing points and the indigenous people living in the region were heavily affected by the development of the railway and deforestation caused by the works. The head of Akrãtikatêjê village, Kátia Silene, protested the “noise, pushing the animals we hunt and more dust, polluting our rivers, killing our fish and affecting bee pollination”, which would only be amplified if plans to expand the railway to a capacity of 230 million tonnes of iron ore were completed. At the time, local chiefs and the Vale company were engaged in hesitant negotiations, with some chiefs more amenable to expansion plans than others.
Norfolk and Western Coal Train
Coal wagon train traveling on the Norfolk & Western Railway. – Insomniac187/Wikimedia Commons
Of course, the United States is not a country that likes to be inferior when it comes to large vehicles. So it’s no surprise that in the 1960s it hosted what was then the heaviest and longest freight train in history. The 48,170 ton train stretched four miles and consisted of a total of 500 coal cars. A total of 21,600 horsepower went into the six diesel engines that powered it, and it hauled its heavy haul to Portsmouth, Ohio, all the way from the West Virginia town of Jaeger. General Electric’s series of robust U30Cs traveled some 159 miles on the Norfolk & Western Railway, and it was important to do so.
Unlike the many giant trains that speed along Brazil’s Carajás Railway, this was not a regularly scheduled journey. Instead, it was the next step in a series of step-up tests to see how the system coped with enormous cargo ships of this calibre. The previous month, the Norfolk & Western Railway hosted another such run, from an almost as huge 450-car train, which traveled to Williamson in the same destination state. As evidenced by the rest of the trains I saw that are still in operation, this type of large-scale freight would prove to be critical around the world. It’s a safer, more direct way to transport huge quantities, reducing the number of trips that need to be made (and no doubt a lot of road congestion if that alternative route had to be taken instead). Valuable information was gleaned from these journeys, from fuel expenditure to the coordination of braking efforts, which will surely play a part in the development of future services of this kind.
Shenhua Coal Train No. 3
An HXD1 locomotive on track. – Munich Beer/Wikimedia Commons
China is well known as one of the manufacturing powerhouses of the world. To become and remain so requires access to a huge amount of raw materials, both for domestic use and for export. In June 2025, Bloomberg reported that China was beginning to export more coal as domestic demand fell due to factors such as the country’s push for renewable energy. When mining coal for export, China has a formidable tool to call upon. Datong in northern China is known as the Coal City. Of course, the region is home to extensive coal mines that require a heavy transportation network. In this case, a power line was added from Datong to the port of Qinhuangdao, located in the northeast of the country.
Thundering across the Daqin line from mine to port, the Shenhua No. 3 carries 300 wagons full of coal, powered by half a dozen HDX1 locomotives (like the one pictured here). Together, this forms a train that spans approximately 1.6 miles on a line approximately 406 miles long. The Daqin line is also heavily used, with up to around 130 trains using it each day. Like iron ore, coal is an essential commodity worldwide. Attitudes towards and use of fossil fuels are changing (as evidenced by China’s export efforts), but the continued importance of coal cannot be ignored. According to the Global Energy Monitor, 6,900 coal mines around the world produce a total of 8.9 billion tons of coal annually. That’s a staggering amount, and it’s clear why the most sought-after resources require such large-sized freight trains to keep up with demand.
Train du Desert from Mauritania
Train du Désert is waiting on the track. – Boada549/Wikimedia Commons
Many of the world’s largest freight trains, as we have seen, focus primarily or exclusively on transporting a very particular commodity: iron ore. This is one of the planet’s most important and intensively used resources, with the US Geological Survey explaining that 98% of iron ore mined worldwide is used in essential construction projects, being turned into steel. There are large-scale operations mining iron ore around the globe, and in Mauritania, another enormous vehicle is playing its part in the task. Train du Desert serves the iron ore mines of this country, which is located in northwest Africa. The mines themselves are located in the Ijill Mountain region near Zouîrât in northern Mauritania.
The final destination of the ore for export is the port of Nouadhibou to the west, a distance of about 437 miles. To make this journey, which takes around 20 hours each day, the powerful Train du Desert is built to make every journey count. It boasts about 200 cars to haul the ore, measures a total of about 1.5 miles in length, and weighs 17,000 tons fully loaded. Transportation is not easy to find in the region, so some travelers choose to ride the ore cars, a free outdoor “service.” It’s an extreme ride, though. In September 2019, journalist Alastair Gill made the trip and reported for BBC Travel about “the blasting and grinding; the constant shivering that ripples through your body; the sand swirling through your hair in the hot breeze; the desert sun stinging your eyelids”. The passenger car — singular — is also an option for those lucky enough to have access to it, but most travelers still travel in ore cars.
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Read the original article on SlashGear.