World's heaviest haul railway?

We checked out the Quebec, North Shore and Labrador on vacation last week east of Quebec City.  I have a piece of paper that claims 20 000 ton trains, up to 240 cars.  They have quite a grade, but it is downhill with the loads.

They are talking about building a new iron ore mine on northern Baffin Island in Canada, along with a new railway to move the ore to the coast.  It's a company called Baffinland Mines, and it's talk of the town up there. 

Thanks for the link, that is neat to see.

 Cheers,

Scott

In the fall of 1967 the Norfolk and Western set a record with a 500 car coal train, running with 6 locomotives on relatively flat terrain.  Had one broken knuckle while leaving the yard.  This record stood until August 26-27, 1996 when South African Transport Services ran a train 7.3 KM long with 70,800 tons of iron ore with 16 engines (9 electric, 7 diesel) pulling 660 cars.

A test on May 28, 1996, Australia ran an ore train 408 KM with 10 GE Dash-8's an average of 35 MPH hauling 57,309 tons of ore and 72,191 tonnes of train. (The mix of metric and non-metric measurements is the way the article has it).  The consist was 3 locos, 135 cars, 2 locos, 135 cars, 2 locos , 135 cars, 2 locos, 135 cars, and 1 loco on the rear.

The full discussion can be found here:

http://list.nwhs.org/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/Week-of-Mon-20040503/000134.html

Tons or tonnes, that's a lotta weight!