What sort of freight do trains carry?

Question

I am doing a project! Plz help, I need to jknow wahat trains carry e.g. like milk or something, thanx in advance!!!

Answer 1

Trains carry almost everything.  If the maker makes it, he wants to sell it, he must ship it somehow.  Autos are shipped via trains, Our coal is shipped via trains,  Computers, Electronics, you name it, it is shipped.  The buyer decides what method of shipment he or she wants, and that's how it works.  Even bodies are shipped, say, to a city it will be buried.  Pretty yuk, but its life.

Answer 2

Almost anything that can be carried by truck can be carried by train.  There are very few cold foods that go by train because those items have to be refrigerated and it is more expensive to transport cold food because of the refrigeration needed.  Trains transport lumber, coal, logs, automobiles, feed, seed, oil, steel, sea containers that are imported and exported.  the list goes on.  Train transportation is cheaper than by truck but is actually slower than shipping by truck because of all of the stops the train has to make.

Answer 3

General freight. By this, I mean anything that can be hauled on rails.

Answer 4

Coal, grain, chemicals, cars, lumber, and inter-modal containers.

Answer 5

Yep, almost everythign is correct. We even hauled radioactive waste from the Three Mile disaster to Idaho, rocket engines to northern Montana for the cold War. Airplane fuselages to the west coast fro Boeing aircraft, and blades for huge wind generators. Apples to zinc.

Answer 6

Everything: coal, grain, soy beans, motorcycle parts, lumber, logs, oil, gas, beer, breakfast cereal, people, mail, ethanol, truck trailers, airplane parts, gravel, ballast, taconite, silver, rail, rail ties, coke (byproduct from oil refining), paladium, bulldozers, graders, backhoes, exavators, cars & other vehicles, locomotive parts, rail wheels, woodchips, paper products, & lots, lots more. You name it, railroads haul it. ;)

Answer 7

everything from Atomic waste to Zatarain's rice.

Answer 8

As other's have stated... EVERYTHING !!

Personally, my brother's power-plant gets two COAL trains a week delivering the coal... next door, hopper cars deliver CORN to a plant that converts it to CORN SYRUP, CORN STARCH, and BULK FIBER for cattle feed.  When I take the ACE Commuter train, we pass LOTS of AUTO CARRIERS, LUMBER and GYPSUM BOARD cars, GRAVEL and STONE cars, as well as the ever-popular ISO CONTAINERS that carry EVERYTHING: Foods (refridgerated or canned), toys, electronics, diapers, clothes,etc.

Specialty cars carry steel, wire, scrap iron, paper, oil, clay, etc...

About the ONLY thing we no longer carry in the USA is LIVE ANIMALS... the manufacturers built more slaughter-houses / processing plants instead of single location plants.  So the animals are TRUCKED the short distance... but then often go OUT on rail-cars.

Answer 9

lots of stuff most ppl think of coal tho

Answer 10

I am a truck driver that specializes in rail freight. So it is true mostly anything and everything. They even put truck trailers full of freight on the railcars then another truck picks it up near the customer. This is cheaper than driving the whole way. Today  I took a load of diapers and feminine products that went from Chicago to California on a Norfolk Southern rail car. Yesterday all kinds of Proctor and Gamble products the same.

Answer 11

Indeed, as mentioned above, railroads today haul about any type of commodity that someone will pay to have shipped via rail and which they can make a profit at.  While they will haul about anything, typically railroads make most of their profits with bulk commodities, like coal (which makes up a large percentage of annual tonnage and revenues), chemicals, or large blocks of ocean-going containers (intermodal services).

Answer 12

Most everyone summed it up, quite well. With the advent of intermodal transport, trains are becoming the fastest growing mode of shipping goods and materials, over great distances. As a result, hiring by most of the Class 1 carriers is up, considerably.

Answer 13

everything ..... u name it we haul it ..

csx emp....

Answer 14

next time you go to the supermarket take a look at what is on the shelves.  everything you see can and has/is transported by rail.  take a look at the shelves next time you go to a lumber yard or hardware store.  everything you see can or has / is transported by rail.