A German Train Driver Lost Count at 100 Cars - Then a Farmer Called It 'a Seven-Minute Train'

Konrad Weiss has driven freight trains across Germany for 28 years, and his proudest number is 740: meters of train, the longest the rules allow on most of Europe's main lines. At a railroad crossing in rural Nebraska he starts counting the cars, loses count at 100 and starts a stopwatch instead. The farmer beside him calls it "about a seven-minute train." It is nearly 3 miles long, with over 400 containers stacked two high and five locomotives, two of them with nobody in them. The stopwatch reads 6 minutes and 52 seconds. With four other Europeans, a Danish logistics planner, a Belgian shunter, an Austrian freight economist and a Polish truck driver, he learns how the 1893 knuckle-coupler law and private track ownership shaped American freight, watches Bailey Yard sort cars by gravity and a Wyoming coal train load without stopping, and stands above the Tehachapi Loop as a train passes over its own tail. If you will never look at a railroad crossing the same way again, subscribe, because the next gate is already coming down, and tell us in the comments: what is the longest train you have ever waited for? Chapters 0:00 A Proud German Driver 0:27 The Seven-Minute Train 1:52 Meet the Five Europeans 2:34 One Container, One Truck 3:38 Locomotives With Nobody Inside 5:05 The 1893 Coupler Law 6:31 Freja Does the Arithmetic 7:33 The Largest Yard on Earth 8:50 Who Owns the Track 9:52 Coal Loaded Without Stopping 11:07 Why Nobody in Europe Knows 11:33 The Train That Meets Itself 12:41 Two People, One Train 13:13 Walking the Train at Night 14:05 400 Trucks, 400 Sandwiches 14:41 Back at the Crossing