It was a commuter train.
In full emergency (or "Big Hole" to the "locals") an F40PH can generate something on the order of 2.3MPH/sec deceleration before wheel slip; the cars are reported to be able to create something like 3MPH/sec. A full air application (like an emergency application) has the cars actually dragging the locomotive.
Now in Chicago, we're famous for the "push-pull" approach to running commuter trains. In general, inbound trains have the loco at the end pushing, while outbound trains have it pulling from the front. This was an outbound train, so the thing was running in the normal direction, and the brake application "stretched" the train. Figure about 3MPH/sec. linear deceleration, and you can see that it still taks a long time to stop such a beast at 68MPH.
As fas as the concept that the "train's last car won't stop for 35 seconds after the locomotive does" on a 100 car consist, that's what the FRED (Flashing Rear End Device) is for (among other things, like relegating the position of brakeman to the dustbin of history). In Big Hole, the FRED dumps air from the back of the train simultaneously, drainig the air pipe from both directions. There is the outside possibility of breaking the train under such conditions, but in a full Emergency application, the engineers simply don't care...all they wanna do is stop the thing, keeping it greasy side down in the process. And if the train does break (in two), then the pipe will drain in 4 places further reducing the aggregate stopping time.
jb4
shrub●bish (Am., from shrub + rubbish, after the derisive name for America's 43 president; 2003) n. 1. a form of nonsensical political doubletalk wherein the speaker attempts to defend the indefensible by lying, obfuscation, or otherwise misstating the facts; GIBBERISH. 2. any of a collection of utterances from America's putative 43rd president. cf. BULLSHIT
