What do the railroads do with their grain cars when they are not hauling grain from the grain belt? My impression is that grain hauling is seasonal.
How often are locomotives for a Class 1, i.e. BNSF, UP, etc. repainted?
How often are the locomotives washed?
Excess covered hoppers in grain service are stored at various locations when the demand is down.
We have about a billion of them here in Saskatchewan…they are stuffed onto every branch line siding throughout the Prairies. Long long lines of them, everywhere, broken up only for road crossings.
Heck of a thing.
If a major carrier like BNSF parks some of its cars on another property, say a regional line, I presume it pays the regional line to do so. Any idea of how much it would cost to park the cars off the owner’s property?
Please don’t overlook my questions about repainting and washing locomotives.
Yes, in your scenario, BNSF would pay the shortline. In fact, many shortlines that don’t have the business on a certain stretch of their track will stuff it full of stored cars to collect a little money.
As for repainting and washing, there is really no answer to that. Railroads will do either on their own whims. Keep in mind that either operation will require environmental mitigation these days.
I’ve seen locomtives in storage that looked (and probably did) come right out of the paint booth. I think some were in a batch the railroad then sold off.
Jeff
A shortline near me gets around $2 per day per car for storage. If you’ve got 800 cars stored on-line (as they recently did) it covers the payroll. I understand that there are limitations regarding how long a car can be stored - something like six months.
That cost likely doesn’t include “shipping and handling.” In the case I mentioned, CSX had to deliver the cars to the shortline, with the cost probably depending on the usual factors, then the cars had to be moved to the storage track.
And others that were so rusty it was tough to figure out the owner. ATSF’s U23C and U33C’s were like that (rust-buckets)
And the cabless BN’s U30-7A…we shipped a lot of them to Brazil for their use…
Painting. Depends on the paint and the pigments. The old acrylic enamel paint would be pretty much shot after 10 years. Imron and other epoxy paints last much longer, although sometimes the pigments don’t. I’ve seen locomotives with 20 year old paint still look pretty good.
Washing. Ususally part of scheduled maintenance work, so a few times a year unless something really awful happens…
Automotive paints from the 80’s & 90’s sucked. After 5-10 years their clear coat would become ‘sunburned’ and die leaving the underlaying color coat to deteriorate to the level of surface rust.
Grain traffic is seasonal, highest after harvest as farmers sell to pay the bank. Grain moves from country elevators to major consumers and export elevators who tend to draw down their inventory in anticipation of lower harvest season prices and desire of country elevators to avoid outside storage if possible. All players are pursuing every strategy they can for an extra penny a bushel, and most would kill grandma for two cents a bushel. Fascinating business, but like railroading you have to live it to understand it, and even then many farmers think everyone else is out to cheat them.
Surplus grain cars are used to move fertilizer in the spring which is the seasonal peak for that commodity.