You are absolutely right! And on the other side of the pond people are preparing for deflation situation (except for Germany, Estonia and Sweden all European Union nations are not doing well at all, mainly to be blamed by strange centralized decisions to kill businesses and the inflexible Euro currency. [:(]
Deflation situation means that people wont use their money today, because everything is cheaper tomorrow, making the downward spiral stronger. If I only could do something about this but what can one human being do? Japan was in deflation situation for two decades, which meant they also got very deep in debt.
In the US each Class 1 carriers has a variety of signifigant commodities that drive their traffic mix. Different commodities have different peak seasons during the year and thus demand for power on each carrier will vary in line with their commodity mix. In many cases, what is a peak season for, say, UP may be a slack season for NS and vice versa and some short term leasing is done among the carriers, in other cases run through power between carriers may be held for a longer time on a carrier that is short of power.
Locomotive lessors have been in the business for a number of years and are fully aware of the commodity cycles of each of the carriers and have a pretty good idea of when the carriers will come looking for additional power and how much power they will be looking for. They will price their leases accordingly.
According to these posts BN is short of power but they must have too many trains to get through yards too. Last weekend I saw 3 manifest trains sitting for at least 3 days on the double mainline between ST Cloud and Becker MN. They had some interesting power also. Check out this bunch of loco’s http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3735715. plus another down the way had 2 newer GEVO’s and 2 old BN GP’s so it looks like they’re running what they can get their hands on.
Terminal congestion, whatever it’s reasons, can drive up a carriers need for power in a almost geometrical progression. Power that is tied up on trains waiting to yard is not available to dispatch the trains that are already on the yard. The longer the terminals tracks are blocked with outbound traffic, the worse the congestions becomes and the more critical the overall power situation is for the carrier.
I have seen the ‘wrong’ operating plan implemented on the ‘wrong’ physical plant and the next thing you know the carrier is virtually shut down.
Whatever the operating plan is for any carrier, it is bound by the physical plant that the carrier operates. A carrier that has relatively small terminals can be brought to a standstill by a ‘fewer, larger train’ operating plan. If you can’t open tracks in a terminal, you can’t yard new inbound on those tracks. Keeping a Class 1 fluid is a constant juggling act - bring traffic into terminals just as traffic is leaving the terminals - keeping the trains ‘in the air’ like a juggler with only ttwo hands keeps multiple objects moving through his hands.
[8D]what name. I am sure that is an alias and I did not point a finger or use any name other than his moniker. are we not allowed to express an honest opionion?
Railroads may also keep a small fleet of locos in storage for those peaks seasons. BNSF has a surge fleet they use during the harvest season for agricultural commodities such as grain. Last i checked the fleet was made up of older SD70MACs.
You can catch a bunch of them over in the Seattle area.
The grain season taps BNSF power resources heavily every year. The fleet reduction and retirement of older units and depowering of others for yard and hump service also took down the fleet. I think once the grain season is over you will see less CREX units unless they get moved to coal trains or oil. Easier to leas some units and turn them back when the peak season is over than to buy new power and then it sits idle. Also I think its a fancy accounting move as well. It is a different accounting section for leasing than for buying.
BNSF has exactly one “Locomotive” in running order stored, a yard slug. There are some locomotives needing major shopwork stored, but nothing else. All running SD70MACs are in service, the SD75Ms that BNSF returned to Bank of America have all been leased back. BNSF also returned some SD60Ms to Progress Rail, BNSF has also leased some of them back, those that Progress Rail hadn’t already leased out to other companies. BNSF’s power shortage is a result of bountiful grain harvest, combined with Crude Oil traffic, and brutal winter weather that is causing trains to die, yards to plug up, and crew shortages.
Here in the SE we are now seeing results of the power shortage. BNSF has a haulage agreement for CSX to haul BNSF intermodal trains from Birmingham - Atlanta area intermodal terminals. Usually the trains are 3 - 4 4400 HP all BNSF. In the last 2 weeks consists are now 3 units max with foreign power first time. Have seen CN, CP, TFM, and even NS power. Today it was the 0700 northbound train late at 1130 with just 2 units a brand new C-4 lead by a Citi rail unit. No numbers as view blocked by another west bound intermodal. Have seen what I suspect was an all CSX locos train for BNSF but could not confirm. !
This sounds a very interesting sight! I spotted even more colorful consist on Left Coast Rail Videos latest preview Shawnut to Dome Valley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNdGrWkws8E
Would you have any pics here of the CSX etc. locos in the West?