Last week while returning to Michigan via eastern Colorado, we joined the tracks at Ordway only to find a long line of parked auto racks. I’ve seen numerous rows of idled cars due to the slowdown, but this row goes on for miles, 6, 7, maybe 8? I’m curious if this stash is larger than most or if there are other places around the country holding hundreds of napping freight cars.
The dormant west end of the Union Pacific Phoenix Sub in Arizona has had several miles of stored autoracks, although some have been removed of late. John Timm
Some short line operators use lightly,or infrequently used tracks for car storage. Specifically, WATCO over in SE Kansas had several areas of car storage. Although several lines have been salvaged and are now gone.
Another area where cars were stored was a former, now closed government installation ( Parsons Army Ammunition Plant, in SEKan.) There was a contractor that managed car storage within the Plant area, and moved cars in and out. They had several hundred cars stored at one time. So there are probably other Govt properties around where a similar prtactice exists, and there are excess unused track facilities.
Another former defense facility used for storing cars is the Savanna Army Depot. When I went past it in 2009, there were hundreds of tank cars there. From a distance they appeared nearly new, and I think they could have been idled by the turmoil in the ethanol industry.
What you saw was just the autoracks…there’s plenty of additional JTTX flatcars and and spine cars hidden out in the weeds (used to be over 40+ miles long)…and you apparently missed all the stored cars west of Alamosa on SLRG…
In Kalamazoo, Michigan the CN has a branchline. On the CN branchline that crosses Kilgore Road is Kilgore Yard. Kilgore Yard used to be for the cars headed to the auto parts stamping plants. It was empty for several years, but now it is filled with lease fleet hoppers and tank cars.
Andrew
I see cars stored at Milan Army Depot at Milan TN. Also East Camden AR has miles of cars in storage too.
On BNSF’s Gunn Line in Minnesota, there were about 20 miles of empty double stack TTX cars stored for about two years (2007-2010) between Nashwauk and Gunn, MN. The only openings were for about 100 feet each side of a crossing and the area that is washed out near Bovey. This included the part of the track owned by CN.
That’s a lot of cars! The only place around here with cars in storage that I know of is the old stub of the branchline to Plainview, MN (IIRC it’s an ex-Milwaukee Road branchline). A bit of it, a mile or two, was kept from the DME mainline in Eyota running north. It used to be packed full with cars in storage but recently they’ve removed some, maybe @30.
Buckeye Yard on the west side of Columbus (NS, former CR/PC) has been shut down for a couple of years, and has been given over car and locomotive storage. Aside from the CSX intermodal yard in the northeast corner, and few departure tracks on the southeast side used for local switching operations and parking through freights for short periods, the entire yard was completely filled with what must have been 1500-2000 cars during the 2009 and the first few months of 2010.
It looks as an effort was made to group cars by type and class. The most arresting was a line of several dozen locomotive secured and stored on one of the receiving tracks for a leasing company still in UP and BNSF/BN paint schemes mixed in with a number of NS units.
All of the NS units and about a third of the lease units are now gone, and the volume of stored cars is down by perhaps 20% as of mid-summer 2010.
At one point during the recession it was reported that 25% of all freight cars were out of service. That would be more than 1 million freight cars. Some of these have gone back into service and some have been scrapped.