Economy as seen from a railfan's point of view

[Russ Bellinis]

At the last model railroad club meeting, one of the members mentioned seeing long lines of older locomotives at U.P.'s Colton Yard. A couple of years ago, U.P. and BNSF were short on power. They had everything they owned running and were also leasing power. I remember seeing ex-U.P. gp40-2's working the industries around the shop where I used to work. The locomotive was still in U.P. colors, but had a leasing company logo in place of U.P.'s logo. Now they have excess power and the long lines of older power are expected to go to the scrape yards. I suspect that a lot of power units that are down may be stored for the purpose of being overhauled when the economy picks up and the railroads need more power as well. The later is more likely on the BNSF than the U.P. BN and SF have always had a practice of rebuilding older power for use in locals and branch line service, while U.P. has always disposed of power instead of doing extensive rebuilds and buying new. Therefore the example of an ex-U.P. gp40-2 being sold off to a leasing company, while BNSF still runs rebuilt gp7's, 9's, 30's and 35's and other 4 axle power in local service up to and including gp50's and perhaps the gp60m's