Western Railroad Discussion > That's PSR, Baby!

UP 7001 leads an eastbound grain train into Topeka by long lines of stored units in the railroad's "Ruby Yard" on the northwest side of the city.  Most of the units are SD70M's, although there are some SD60M's and AC4400's back there as well.  

The 7001 seems to have been repainted recently, and still looks great.  Originally, it was one of the GECX leasers that was delivered in Armour Yellow paint.

- Jeff Carlson

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Nice, but depressing shot.  Yes, there have been several of the 7000s repainted the last few years.
Brian Stevens

Well considering how old the SD70M's are, many are old enough to drink, it's not surprising they're hitting the storage lines.

"That's PSR baby", except there might be another component. I heard a rumor that 20 to 40 million have lost their jobs since March, government numbers. I might be making an assumption that those consumer's are not buying products and I also assume that since sales numbers are down the supply chain has slowed down. Well in my industry lay offs are 90%, my company it's 70% which I am one. We recieved our 2nd furlough notice and I don't expect to be back to work for a while. Patrick

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/20 22:42 by shipsbell.

Just in this yard alone, you're probably looking at $100 million of locomotives sitting dead, not earning any money.  That's alot of capital not earning a return!

       Better recalculate that figure to about $250,000,000 or more in original cost of these units.

Out west here, especially the BNSF is very busy.  Grain traffic to the PNW is extemely heavy now and intermodal is very busy too.  On the downside, coal is in the toilet, and will likely be that way into the future, so that results in some extra locomotives.

As for PSR, this is definitely adding many locomotives to the storage lines.  UP is now running their trains with minimum HPT (UP uses another method to compute this), so you will have extra power gettting stored from this as well as many slow moving land barge trains.

shipsbell Wrote:
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> "That's PSR baby", except there might be another
> component. I heard a rumor that 20 to 40 million
> have lost their jobs since March, government
> numbers. I might be making an assumption that
> those consumer's are not buying products and I
> also assume that since sales numbers are down the
> supply chain has slowed down. Well in my industry
> lay offs are 90%, my company it's 70% which I am
> one. We recieved our 2nd furlough notice and I
> don't expect to be back to work for a while.
> Patrick
>
> Posted from Android

Neat shot, Jeff!

RC Lundgren
Elgin, TX

Thanks a bunch.  Here's a similar shot of the UP 7651 that was working the elevators in the background.  This was taken a few minutes before the 7001 arrived, and you can see how the train had been split in two for the grade crossing in the background.

- Jeff Carlson

texchief1 Wrote:
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> Neat shot, Jeff!
>
> RC Lundgren
> Elgin, TX

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Neat image. I was in St. Louis this weekend and saw that a UP transfer to 23rd St. Yard had a set of 3 SD60's (standard cabs.) That was a surprise, I thought those were either sold, scrapped, or stored. I'll have some pictures to post when I get time to edit. Seeing these photos, I thought something like that would have SD70M's at this point.

There are still a number (a handful?) of the rebuilt ones that are kicking around, but a cool catch, regardless.  A few weeks ago, I shot this North Platte-bound manifest that had UP's SD60 #2155 fourth out.  That was a surprise!

- Jeff Carlson

inCHI Wrote:
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> Neat image. I was in St. Louis this weekend and
> saw that a UP transfer to 23rd St. Yard had a set
> of 3 SD60's (standard cabs.) That was a surprise,
> I thought those were either sold, scrapped, or
> stored. I'll have some pictures to post when I get
> time to edit. Seeing these photos, I thought
> something like that would have SD70M's at this
> point.

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I guess that leads to the next question, what is in the decision to park a locomotive? Maintenance timing? Blue card timing? Leasing/financial contracts? Just curious. 

 

Mike ONeill
Parker, CO

Here's a drone shot of Neff from last weekend. Its not the best with the sun, I was shooting the KCS coming out of Knoche and figured since it was in the air....more stored locos

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wyeth Wrote:
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> Out west here, especially the BNSF is very busy. 
> Grain traffic to the PNW is extemely heavy now and
> intermodal is very busy too.  On the downside,
> coal is in the toilet, and will likely be that way
> into the future, so that results in some extra
> locomotives.
>
> As for PSR, this is definitely adding many
> locomotives to the storage lines.  UP is now
> running their trains with minimum HPT (UP uses
> another method to compute this), so you will have
> extra power gettting stored from this as well as
> many slow moving land barge trains.
>

Sounds like a page UP took from SP since they always had a habit of doing that a lot, expect trains stallling on steep grades no thanks to that idea on HPT!

shipsbell Wrote:
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> I might be making an assumption that
> those consumer's are not buying products and I
> also assume that since sales numbers are down the
> supply chain has slowed down.

The amount of consumer goods my employer is currently moving across the country in containers has our volume numbers close to what they were in 2018 and the backlog at the ports is months long. Someone must be buying all of it...