Posted on 04/28/2020 11:30:56 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
If a railroad locomotive is an iron horse, then a vast herd of them has been put out to pasture in Salt Lake City.
They’re lined up, nose to tail, waiting to go nowhere — at least for now. By some estimates as many as 200 railroad engines — each one costing about $3 million — have been sidelined over the last year or so in a Union Pacific rail yard just north of downtown Salt Lake City.
And it has nothing at all to do with the new coronavirus.
A company spokeswoman for Union Pacific refused to answer detailed questions about the unusual sight, but Kristen South wrote in an email to the Deseret News that the engines are “being stored” due to a companywide efficiency program that kicked in during 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at deseret.com ...
A friend from an old railroad family, says the accidents went up when they started hiring unconnected outsiders.
When the crew is connected by family and friends, they watch out for each other. Unconnected, they don't care that Stosh showed up drunk. Thinking that if they stay back it will be safe.
While you can reduce crews with longer trains, you still need a certain amount of horsepower to pull a certain tonnage over the mountain. I’m guessing that this reflects reduced tonnage.
Those look like relatively new engines. Less than 20 years old.
The newer engines have a lot more horsepower than the older ones. If they were replacing every retiring engine with a new one, it’s not a surprise that they’d have a surplus.
They can always be dispatched to localities to provide electric power in blackouts.
Does anybody know if the electronics on these things are tempest hardened?
“While you can reduce crews with longer trains”
With Conductor Ed Harris?
Had a wild thought that this is promo for Snowpiercer on May 17.
Why would they need to be tempest? Do you know what tempest is?
From what I can see, those parked locos look fairly modern - spotted a few wide cabs.
Surprisingly enjoyed the movie; generally hate endless series created from movies with an acceptable ending.
If these engines are diesel powered electric variety, they make great generators if the grid goes down.
Pipelines have sidelined Buffet’s railroad investment.
Beat me by six minutes. LOL
They either get sold to other railroads/leasing companies , put in storage until needed, or sold to the scrapper
Same in the Roseville CA yards on the other end of the transcontinental UP line. Just no shipping or other related material to haul, so engines fill the yard instead of trains.
Less coal being shipped, less need for them, thus they are stored
sheer ignorance. longer trains do not mean fewer locomotives. and it’s weight being pulled, not length of the train that matters. a locomotive is rated for a given tonnage over the road. this figure varies with the location....grades, curves, etc. less tonnage uphill of course. but over the same section of railroad from point A to point B it’s the same. so if one of those units can pull 50 loaded 100-ton cars, you will need two of those units to pull 100 loaded 100-ton cars.
My guess is that there are economies of scale in running fewer trains that are longer. Replacing 3 trains x 3 locomotives each with 2 trains x 4 locomotives each reduces the fleet requirement by 1 locomotive.
Let’s look at your example. If one locomotive can pull 50 loaded 100-ton cars, then a train with 75 cars will need two locomotives — because they can’t put half a locomotive on the train. In effect, there is “unused” pulling power for 25 cars. What the railroads are doing is organizing their trains so that they are putting as many of them out on the system in sizes of 50 cars, 100 cars, 150 cars, etc. — thereby minimizing the “wasted” pulling power on their trains.
Why would they need to be tempest? Do you know what tempest is?
I visited a Project Tempest site in the building that I worked. AKA the CIA room.
A friend was involved with it and arranged for a tour (circa 1985).
A double hardened Faraday cage with the works!!!
Any sort of isolation and it was in use, including vibration dampening.
IIRC at the time, even the name ‘Project Tempest’ was classified.
On a locomotive? Probably not.
> Why would they need to be tempest? Do you know what tempest is?
Yes. Impervious to EMP.
If you were going to use them as backup generators, they should be able to survive an EMP event.
Perhaps they’re tempest by default, with their steel enclosures acting like a big faraday cage grounded through the tracks.
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