‘Ghost trains' coming back to life in improving economy


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WEST DESERT -- There's a strange sight in the desert 60 miles west of Salt Lake City. It's a train, worth tens of millions of dollars, that appears to have been abandoned.

It snakes across the desert in one of Utah's most remote areas -- 2 miles long, 200 cars. There's no locomotive attached and not a railroad worker in sight.

This "Ghost Train" is going nowhere. All it does is collect tumbleweeds.

"The economy has been real tough for a lot of industries, railroads included," says Dan Harbeke, spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad.

Harbeke uses the term "railcars in storage." It means they're parked out of the way, somewhere, because there isn't enough business to keep them moving.

Industry-wide, nearly 500,000 freight cars sat idle a few months ago. Union Pacific alone had 72,000 cars sidetracked, along with 2,000 locomotives. The biggest railroad in the West was hurting big time.

"When you figure $2 million or more for a locomotive, and you have 2,000 sitting around, that's a big opportunity cost," Harbeke says.

But in recent months the railroad business has shown new life. Union Pacific restarted 500 of the 2,000 locomotives and cut idle freight cars nearly in half -- from 72,000 to 38,000.

It's because some sectors of the economy are shipping more goods.

"There are some sectors that are still weak: lumber, steel, coal, the energy business. But there are several industries that have picked up," Harbeke says.

One government program apparently made a significant difference.

"The auto market has been soft for the last couple of years, but with the government's Cash for Clunkers program, we saw a good uptick in business on the automotive side," Harbeke says.

The idled trains had one positive effect: With less traffic on the rails, trains were able to move faster.

Union Pacific claims customer satisfaction has never been higher. They just wish they had more customers.

E-mail: hollenhorst@ksl.com

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