Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Saw something strange today

At least to me. Going down I-10 in Southern Arizona, somewhere before Tucson, and looked off to my left and there was a railroad track full of train engines. I saw at least 2 miles of it, and did not see the beginning or the end. Not moving, but all engines. miles

Probably just parking them....

Burlington Northern in the 80s use to park a whole bunch of engines every winter in the train yard there in St Paul... I'd have to drive thru it to get to West Publishing, an account of mine...

They didn't need their entire fleet during winter time, so they would park 25 to 30 % of it, for 4 months or 5...

Funny thing was, they would just leave the locomotives idling the entire 4 months... I thought that was kind of wasteful, but talking to a supervisor over there one day, he told me it was cheaper to just let the diesels run for 4 months at idle, than it would be to try and get them started, after sitting for 4 months... especially in MN winter temps...

The ranchers in the northern most parts of the country leave their diesel pick up trucks running all winter.

they are basically in storage waiting to be fitted with some new stuff to meet e.p.a. requirements.
that's one version i have heard
here's another:
http://tucson.com/business/local/id...5a8e4f5-0d99-5c20-a18e-06bf3ad54436.html

I've never seen the engines stockpiled like that, but there's a line of tracks nearby they use for storing rail cars. The locals ain't too crazy about it, but that's all they use that single track for. They got tired of the cars getting broken into by vagrants and just leave the doors open now.

Must have moved them south for winter? They were all stored in east central wy last fall!! Not as much coal to haul don't need em all now

They've been there for months.
Was like that back in August too.
My son said it was called a power pull.

That's the story that I got from BNSF locally when I inquired after a trip to Tucson a couple of weeks ago.

Not here, just plug 'em in over night.


We have left old diesel tractors run for a few days in a row during real cold snaps but not pickups.

I work for BNSF. We have stored locomotives all over our territory, they have been drained and shut down and will remain that way until business picks up again.

Any interesting old locos? It takes a better train nut than me to know the differences, but at times I have seen some rare ones here, on a UP line.

Large fleets of locos are parked.
Nothing to move.
Erie GE loco plant laid off 1500 last year.
Texas GE loco plant just laid 250 and cut the rest to 32 hours a week.
Its ugly.

dave

Paid opposition of the pipe line is coming into focus. miles

I worked in a diesel shop for a while when I was a kid...

locomotives do not get anti-freeze in the cooling system, just corrosion inhibiter, so anything with water in them must be left running in the winter to keep from freezing. it's not because they are hard to start when cold. a half a can of starting either in each cylinder bank's air box and good batteries will almost always do the trick...

but I bet if the price of scrap steel goes up, many of those 'stored' locomotives will get recycled...

Between Tucson and Benson....

Been there for a looong time...

I was hoping someone would tell us that they were stockpiling the engines down there so they would be ready to haul the new border fenceing materials.

I saw the same thing and did some quick research. Coal industry decline is the main driver. Union Pacific has about 1400 engines idle nation wide of which approximately 300 are in Benson, AZ. Each engine is approximately $2 million.

Benson = $600 million
Nation wide = $2.8 billion

Reminds me of these sights you see on YouTube where there's old trains that have been sitting for decades.

We used to run across abandoned strip mine equipment back in the old mines down in Ohio once in a while. Old dozers, shovels, Euc's etc. They'd put a lot of that stuff in the bottom of the pits and just let the water overtake them. Some of these spots are popular dive sights now.

If we can get rid of E P A and get the coal mines opened up again those babies will be pullin the load again !