The Autorack promblem

[minernut]

Yesterday April 27, Sunday, my dad and I were traveling in our Toyota to my cousins on my father's side to congratulate Kevins first communion. Driving on Park Blvd. we had to stop for a union pacific train on the Ex Chicago Northwestern. When the gates went up and my dad slowly went over the tracks, I always look both ways to figure out which side the train was on. It was travelling on the northern track. I happened to notice in the distance on the middle track the end of a sitting auto rack freight train. This was around 1:25pm. When we were on our way home taking the same route, the auto racks were still sitting on the middle track at approximately 5:20 pm. The auto racks were sitting there for four hours that I noticed. Our the American rails having problems storing the auto racks? Because I heard somewhere that Chicago has a congestion problem with freight cars, and are there other ways to transport automobiles? I generally don't like auto racks.

 

[cascaderailroad]

A while back there was a surplus of auto rack cars sitting for months on end in storage, as automobile sales were way down, as were automobile factory productions at an all time low. At one time there was a gridlock into the LA Basin, with several dozen loaded trains in storage on sidings, There were also many hundreds of locos, all sitting idle in stretches of 50 or more locos sitting on sidings for months on end. Next time you see a truck carrying 8-10 new automobiles over the highway, cross country, consider that one train can carry 3000 or more automobiles to market. Besides ... When FEMA wants to turn them into forced human transport carriages, come Agenda 21, they will come in quite handy. :hehe:

 

[JCitron]

I saw the same a couple of years ago while up in Montana. We were heading from Great Falls to Le Havre, MT and paralleled what was left of a branch line that ran between the two cities. As we approached Le Havre, there were what appeared to be many miles of TTX TOFC and COFC cars stored on the branch. The only break between the strings of cars was at crossing so locals could get to the opposite side of the track.

Last year, while in Kansas and Nebraska, I saw the same thing again but with grain hoppers. This was during the off season so the hopper cars were shoved on to an old branch and left there out of the way to keep the mainline free.

John