That is the question I decided to tackle the afternoon of November 9th when a friend let me know the UP was running a train of that length eastbound across the UP Baird Sub between Santa Teresa, NM and Dallas, TX. My first distraction of the day came before lunch when I caught the eastbound Abilene Local with two SD40N’s between Weatherford and Annetta in perfect light. The extra long nose indicates the lead unit was once used as a Locotrol master or slave unit in the early days of remote control.
After lunch I decided to use the drone around Iona Siding at a high altitude so as to give me a view back west roughly three miles to Aledo of the approaching 17,000-foot intermodal. The elevator in Aledo is visible in the upper right corner.
Now that is a loooong train!
Once the 17,000-foot train made it into Fort Worth, a westbound came out that I used the drone for as it passed through Aledo. This train was no “shorty” either.
I think to answer the title question no matter what camera you may be using it will be hard to definitively make out the rear end of a train over three miles long.
