It’s a mix of both, really. They would not be losing significant time by actually going to the sidings and letting passenger trains go by, and time is less significant in freight anyway. The longer trains let them do some (fairly questionable) optimizations in their freight delivery though, and since they go unpunished, they go for it.
Ah. That’s why the US trains are always stupidly long. It’s not economics. It legal.
Its also so they can use less crews to run trains. A 2 person crew can run a long train that otherwise would require 2 or even 3 crews.
It’s a mix of both, really. They would not be losing significant time by actually going to the sidings and letting passenger trains go by, and time is less significant in freight anyway. The longer trains let them do some (fairly questionable) optimizations in their freight delivery though, and since they go unpunished, they go for it.