Seems like I see more and more pics of numerous idle units…
Must be one heavy caboose…
Tom
That’s longer than the line BNSF keeps at Northtown…
There are different places to look for indications of the status/health of the economy. I look at the railroads. When there is an obvious decrease in traffic and the company is beginning to idle - do they still cocoon units? - motive power to me it is a sure sign that manufactures ain’t shipping!
…I believe most realize we’re still scraping along the bottom of this extreme downturn, and until something changes we can expect rails and other industries of our ecconomy to be stilled somewhat.
No Question that business is slow. Any of you RR employees feeling the heat?
I remember during the gas crisis of the '70s, Frisco had miles of auto rack cars parked on sidings all around the Chrysler plant.
Its a shame to see long lines of parked units, hopefully not awaiting an untimely end. But even the once state-of-the-art C40-8s are now older units and being phased out.
No, I’m not feeling the “heat”. We seem to be as busy as ever by us, and occasionally an extra job is added to the full component of jobs at our end of the bowl.
Here’s something to chew on: it isn’t only the downturn that may be laying up these locomotives. We’ve been told in the past that for every mile per hour our system velocity increases, the result is like saving 200 locomotives. System velocity has been up lately–anywhere from about a quarter-MPH to nearly two MPH above goal, consistently. That would be easy enough to understand if the velocity increase was driven exclusively by lower carloadings (resulting in fewer trains to get in each others’ way), but the carloading figure is well above “meltdown” levels, and comes up occasionally to within about 5000 of the post-merger record (these figures are a running seven-day total, to adjust for normal weekly business cycles).
must be cleaning the shop floor
Must not have been parked too long–no graffiti on the first 4 or 5 units.
Jay
The EMD SD70ACes and GE Evolution Series Locomotives are obviously replacing these units, unless there is an extreme need for them.
What about fuel economy and emission standards?
Andrew
only heat we are feeling is the heat when we dont have air-conditioning, we been so busy i didnt relize we are at the weekend already,
Well, here in Phoenix, rail traffic is definantly down. I think Phoenix has to be one of the biggest cities in the US and the smallest rail network so its not hard to follow the comings andf goings.
I have a few freinds on with UP which works most of the southeast part of town where I live. traffic is way down. Some locals around here used to scramble to work the load before the shift was up and now… lucky if they work 3 hours.
Most of rail traffic here is what comes in, not much goes out. Construction and building materails, autos, and supplies. All of which, are way down.