Eastern Railroad Discussion > Scrap value of a loco?

I own a pool service and renovation company and just cashed in my copper, brass, motors ect for $3200. What is the scrap value of a loco and who gets the money? Does one company buy the loco then tear it apart to piece out?

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Varies by weight location and contractor. Owner can have it scrapped on site or sell to a company such as LTE. Much has to do with whether or not it is movable.

SWAG, if steel scrap is at $200/ton or $.10/lb and you can recover 75% of the 368,000lbs of a SD40-2 would be around $28,000. dave.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/12 12:01 by davebb71.

Interesting, thank you

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Locomotives are extremely hard to scrap out. Right now scrap steel is around 200 dollars per ton delivered to a scarp yard in Wisconsin. I would imagine you would be lucky to get 100-150 per ton for a locomotive. Think of the size and thickness of the material they are made from. On the other hand, there are thousands of pounds of copper in the wiring, generators, traction motors and cooling radiators. The external "shell" can be removed easily but when you get down to the prime mover and the frame, you need some pretty sizable equipment to prepare it for a steel mill. Most locomotives end up getting cut down to 5 foot "heavy melt" which is about the largest size that any steel mill will accept. I worked in the scrap business for 20 years but our facility didn't have rail access. We never scrapped any locomotives but we did scrap some really old tank cars and bought a fair amount of OTM (other track material). I did get to watch the scrappers cut up an ex Milwaukee Road H10-44 that was wrecked in a highway collision. That one went out the hard way, totally cut up by hand with a torch. It took 2 guys about 3 weeks to finish it off. The prime mover, which was not damaged, went to Texas for oilfield use. Dave

davebb71 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> SWAG, if steel scrap is at $200/ton or $.10/lb and
> you can recover 75% of the 368,000lbs of a SD40-2
> would be around $28,000. dave.

The scrap value is much higher than just the value of the steel scrap less the cost of cutting it up. Considering the value of the prime mover, radiators, 6 traction motor/wheelsets, air compressor, main and aux generators, etc. a typical SD-40-2 parted out would net out around 80-110 grand.

Check out railswap.org to get an idea of what some components bring.

Dick Samuels
www.oregonpacificrr.com

Of course the value would be higher if you parted it out. I'm sure LTEX is only "junking" the hulk after they have stripped away any usable parts.

Varies by weight location and contractor. Owner can have it scrapped on site or sell to a company such as LTE. Much has to do with whether or not it is movable.

Save the 30's there to beautiful to be the ut up!!

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