Grady Hillhouse of Practical Engineering recently did a great demo of this. He was able to pull his car in neutral and an empty train car on rails with roughly the same force.
The only major difference is that they often use a safety air brake system shared across an entire consist (train) that requires “charged” pressure (above atmosphere) to disengage the brake (although I think they have moved to an electronic system that now monitors air pressure in each car individually).