Western Railroad Discussion > Montana parking lot

BNSF is using their Great Falls to Helena line which has been OOS for over a decade no to park mty grain trains from both ends. MRL crews do the duties for BNSF on the Helena side.

Posted from Windows Phone OS 7

Wow...Also storing Emtpy coal sets in sidings and OOS tracks in eastern Montana and North Dakota. 
Rough times are ahead of us, and everyone laughed when I said "down turn in economy" couple months ago. 

Add in South Dakota too. Here on the RCPE we are storing empty grain hoppers anywhere we can find room for them, OOS tracks, unused elevator tracks; and on the Yale Spur in Huron we are storing 74 empty clay hoppers. And as evidence for the downturn in grain shipments, we only had 17 cars in the whole yard - until I brought in a 103 car Westbound lol then it's 120 cars.

Posted from Android

Is this due to a general down turn in the economy or just the cyclical nature of the coal and grain business?  I know Spring time is when power plants, including coal-fired ones, shutdown for maintenance since the high demand of electricity for heating during the winter has ended and high demand for summer cooling has yet to start.  I don't know about the grain business, but the crops don't know there is a slowing economy, I would think this is the slow time for graint shipments coming off winter.

I imagine the stored coal cars have more to do with the one-two punch of EPA edicts and natural gas prices. Just read in the Georgia EMC monthly magazine that household costs for electiricity has increased 13-14% last year and will more than likely increase the same again this year as a result of the EPA edicts and the surge capacity is very limited as a result too. Could be an intersting summer in DC if there are any brownouts from heat waves this summer.

Jay

I was on a coal empty today for the first time since February. As for the ag biz, there are still some huge piles at some of our loop track elevators here in South Dakota, but that business has slowed considerably. I had 25 fewer conductors under me still working on Friday morning vs. Monday morning. Current student conductors in my seniority district already told they'll go straight to the furlough board after they complete their training, and all previously scheduled classes for 2015 canceled.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/15 21:56 by Interlocker.

The strong dollar is having an effect on grain exports. 

BN4364 Wrote:
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> The strong dollar is having an effect on grain
> exports. 

Grain exports tend to slow down this time of year, but in this case, yes, the strong dollar has made it worse.

Allen