American freight trains move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel:
According to our calculations, which match the [Association of American Railroads]‘s tally exactly, the nation’s seven major railroad companies reported the following for 2007:
- Moving 1,770,545,245,000 ton-miles of freight
- Consuming 4,062,025,082 gallons of diesel fuel (including freight trains and trains in switching yards, but excluding passenger trains)
The average works out to be 435.88 ton-miles per gallon of fuel.
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The rail industry says its fuel efficiency has increased by 85 percent since 1980. It attributes that to factors that include using new and more efficient locomotives, training engineers to conserve fuel, using computers to assemble trains more efficiently in the yard and to plan trips more efficiently to avoid congestion, and reducing the amount of time engines are idling.