Ericmopar wrote:What Buzz said, plus a 25 car passenger train wouldn't be 10,000 tons...
Someones numbers are very wrong.
More to the point, someone was half asleep while trying to figure things too quickly, and he got what he deserved. Yes, those numbers don't add up.
A total weight of 1,625 tons would be about the minimum for a 25-car train of lightweights back in the '50s, with 1,700 - 1,800 tons probably being closer, given that somewhat heavier sleeping cars substantially outnumbered coaches on the better trains in those days. These cars tended to run with a minimum of head-end cars, mainly limited to what was necessary to handling the passengers' checked baggage. Mail and express cars, which typically included a good mix of heavyweights and 50-foot express boxes and refrigerators (REA cars were typically 50-footers, as were UP's express boxes) tended to keep to secondary passenger schedules or dedicated mail and express trains, in most cases two a day. In any case, even an express box might typically be grossing 50 tons or more, which is marginally lighter than the lightest of the early lightweight coaches (Budd's earliest coaches for the Pennsy were about 63 tons exclusive of passengers).