Idle New Cars?

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

At work the other day, we recieved 30 tank cars that were recently acquired through lease. What is curious though is that the built date on the cars are 6-07 but they appear to be brand new. The cars are Trinity built 30,000 gallon general service tank cars for ethanol that are numbered DBUX in the 302500’s-302600’s. The cars are not sequentially numbered but show no road grime as well as they all have ‘TRN’ labled seals which I believe would be from the TRiNity factory. Also, the chalk lines are visible that are used to level the data lettering.

So my question is, if these are brand new cars which I am led to believe, why would they be sitting unused for 13 months?

-Tom

2

There have been many ethanol plants scheduled to be built that are now on hold. Perhaps there were many ethanol tankcars that were built that had no loads to carry.