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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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/~/...y2010.ashx

Mike

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

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.