# 7 Mile long string of Double Stack SP Flat Cars



## jbwilcox (Jan 2, 2008)

I drive to Portland from Olympia Washington several times a month.

For the past three months, just south of Olympia and just before getting to Chehalis I see a string of these double stack flat cars on a siding next to the freeway. They are unloaded.

The amazing thing is that the string of cars is 7.5 MILES LONG! I am going to fast to count the individual cars but there must be an incredible number to stretch for seven and a half miles.

My question is: Does anyone know why they might just be sitting on this siding? They have been there for at least three months. Last year there was a string of box cars on the same siding that sat there for almost six months before they moved.

Could they be awaiting scrapping or is there some other explanation? Most seem to be Southern Pacific cars. It just seems like an inefficient use of rolling stock to have them set there out of service for so long.

How many engines would be required to pull that many cars?

John


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## bnsfconductor (Jan 3, 2008)

The cars are in storage. I believe the UP owns the right of way that you can see off the freeway but I could be wrong. When railroads have two types of cars available to use; the ones they own, and leased cars (and interchanged cars). With leased cars (TTX for example) each railroad pays a daily fee to the leasee company to use their cars in different types of services. A yardmaster once told me that it cost the BNSF $200 a day per car for each car that was not moved in over 48 hours (or something like that). So what happens with the leased cars is that the railroad 'returns' the cars back to the leasee company. Then the leasee company has to find storage for all these returned cars. Well most leasee companys don't have the miles and miles of track for storage for all thier cars. So they then call up the railroads and ask them if they will store cars for them in an unused siding. So the leasee company sends back the empty train cars to the railroad company were they store the cars for a fee (again somewere around $200 a car). 
I don't know about the UP or other class I's but the BNSF tends to release these leased cars and replace them with their own privately owned cars for use in train service. 

I hope this makes sense! 

Most likely those cars were not put in all together but in train sized chunks (say 7000') at a time and coupled together. I bet if you walked the entire length of the cars in storage they would not be all laced together, but laced together in those train sized chunks. It would take to long for the air to pump up on 7.5 miles of cars. 

Craig


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Others on a site with more paranoid denizens have also noted these cars. They did some checking, and attributed their presence to the economic crash - a *lot* less stuff was coming in from China all of a sudden, which meant a lot less containerized cargo, so there were a lot of flat cars that had to be stashed in some out of the way place. 

On a related (non train) note, there was (is?) also a huge fleet of containerized cargo ships anchored somewhere off the coast of China, awaiting cargo to carry.


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## Rod Fearnley (Jan 2, 2008)

Last year after the BTS, Jill and I drove back over to Prescott via Barstow and Kingman. Also along that stretch of highway were miles of Gunderson type cars laid up. We put it down to the economy too.
We also noticed the huge amount of UP prime movers laid up near Ontario CA.
Rod F.


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

There is a string of Double Stacks Along I 40 on the way to ABQ. Along with the double stacks is a long string of Car Carriers. And just off of rout 54 between Tucumcari and Logan NM is a string of Piggy Backs. I see those every year on the way to Marty's


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## Tom Parkins (Jan 2, 2008)

You might want to double check. I read somewhere on the internet that those 7 miles cars will be immediately put back in service when USA, Aristo, and MTH release all of their proposed and re-issued products. Miles of containers headed for all of the good little garden railroaders through out the land.









Tom


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## Biblegrove RR (Jan 4, 2008)

I thought they were waiting in line for Marty's next expansion project so they could immediately go back into service.







Craig, thanks for the explanation! I was intrigued to learn different aspects of real operating. I have had a couple custom cars painted up and had "leased to BibleGrove Corp." on them etc. Although probably not prototypical, I thought was a cool added feature none the less.


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## BN3140 (Mar 2, 2009)

In Idaho we had some good looking reefers sitting here for 4 months in storage from the BNSF. They were about 1-2 miles long in a line. They replaced them later with unused centerbeams. I suspect that after the lumber mill in town closed they had alot of extra centerbeams. Along the Montana Rail Link, I noticed alot of empty centerbeams sitting in every siding there was. Farther south, near Boise, They had maybe 5 miles of unused centerbeams. The cars are not always leased, like in the case of the reefers, but the centerbeams were almost all TTX leaser cars.


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## ZachsPappaw (Jan 3, 2008)

around here we see TOFC and autoracks stored everywhere.

Jeff


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

Yep short line RRs love storing these cars on there property as its a good sorce of income to these folks. So Mile after mile of stored cars up in upper Michigan last year. Later RJD


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## wchasr (Jan 2, 2008)

Here in WNY jsut about every passing siding has cars stored. Between Hinsdale and Cuba on I-86 there are a few miles of Covered Hoppers, up near Orchard Park there is a long string of Gundersons off I90, Coming south on RT 16 between Franklinville & Machias is a few miles of even more covered Hoppers. Those are roads I travel pretty often and are all Shortline or secondary lines and are sidings. So when does the economy start to pick up and those cars start moving again? 

Chas


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## armorsmith (Jun 1, 2008)

In Pensacola, FL along the CSX mainline, there is a string of covered hoppers that have been there **forever**, and here in Panama City, the Bay Line (aka Genessee and Wyoming) has been storing strings of TOFC flats. Some of the flats have been converted for carrying large pipe from a local company. 

Bob C.


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## Mike O (Jan 2, 2008)

It is the economy. There were 266K fewer carloadings in December 09 than in December 07. Check out the AAR monthly report at http://www.aar.org/NewsAndEvents/~/media/AAR/RailTimeIndicators/RailTimeIndicatorsJanuary2010.ashx 

Mike


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## wchasr (Jan 2, 2008)

In my recent travellings I drove up Rt 16 last Thursday and noted to my wife that ALL of the covered hopper along Rt 16 thru Franklinville are gone and all of the Covered hoppers between Hinsdale and Cuba along I-86 are gone as of our trip on Sunday. Leaving only some center braced flatcars in that stretch. 

Chas


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## Scottychaos (Jan 2, 2008)

We have a lot of shortlines up here in central and western NY, 
all last year, 2009, unused sidings and spurs were PACKED with excess cars, all over the state.. 
the local Class-1's would pay the shortlines rent to store their cars.. 
made a little money for the shortlines anyway! one bit of good news in the midst of the recession.. 

the class-1's also stored a lot of cars on their own remote litle-used tracks.. 
it was funny though, because it led to several news stories about idiot locals who suddenly noticed they bought a house next to railroad tracks.. 
the tracks in their backyard had been emtpy for years, then overnight a string of stored freight cars appears.. 
OUTRAGE! how dare the railroad store cars on *its own* tracks.. 
dangerious! kids will climb on them! vandals will appear! 
"we have lived here for 10 years!" (the railroad tracks have been there for 150 years.) 
news cameras were trotted out, idiot politicians stand in front of the cameras promising they will "do something".. 
of course, they could do nothing..and eventually the cars moved back out.. 

http://www.railroad.net/forums/view...mp;t=65919 

found the video:
http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/...;wpid=1277

Scot


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## Dwayne (Jun 10, 2010)

Driving around the country as a trucker I see stored cars everywhere. When you come into Detroit for instance on the Ambassador Bridge you'll see a ton of double deck auto racks srored along the tracks beside the river front. They've been there for over a year.


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

If you ride the light rail south of Denver you will see many (well over 200) UP diesels of all types in storage tracks. I couldn't begin to imagine the cost of that inventory.

Chuck


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## San Juan (Jan 3, 2008)

I've always wondered what maintenance needs to be done on cars that have been sitting in storage for long periods of time. Can the railroad simply couple up some locos, test the air, and off you go? 

I'd imagine the wheels, brakes, air lines, etc... need to be inspected after sitting idle for long periods. But how is this done in such remote locations...like in the California/Arizona deserts where BNSF stores lots of double stack and piggy back flats. Maybe a trainset of these idle cars have to be towed with slow orders until they get somewhere like Barstow where car inspections can be done?


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## jgallaway81 (Jan 5, 2009)

Under FRA regs, the brake control valves have to be serviced annually (the COTS). However, a conductor could do a simple inspection (we call them C-100 Car Inspections) that could asertain that the brakes apply & release as commanded by the engineer. The cars could likely then be moved to the first terminal online that could do a full service inspection.

Somewhere along the line I recall reading that if left sitting long enough, the roller bearings can become flattened. That would be my main concern.


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## ZachsPappaw (Jan 3, 2008)

I read somewhere that something like 23% of America's railcars are still stored.

Jeff


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