Freight Train Passing By

The chugging of the train echos throughout the land like the call of a metal whale vibrating for many miles through the waves of desert heat. These lanes are the lifeblood of industry. Exhaustively journeying across the land, day and night, making sure that our goods get delivered on time and with as little environmental impact as possible. A freight train or goods train is a group of freight cars hauled by one or more locomotives on a railway, ultimately transporting cargo between two points as part of the logistics chain. Trains may haul bulk material, intermodal containers, general freight or specialized freight in purpose-designed cars. When considered in terms of ton-miles (tonne-kilometers) hauled per unit of consumed energy, rail transport is more efficient than other means of transportation. The main disadvantage of rail freight is its lack of flexibility. For this reason, rail has lost much of the freight business to road transport. Many governments are now trying to encourage more freight onto trains, because of the environmental benefits that it would bring. Intermodal freight systems favoring road transport often carry road wheels with the cargo. In some countries rolling highway trains are used; trucks can drive straight onto the train and drive off again when the end destination is reached. A system like this is used on the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=120776