I just got an email from the UP Steam Club folks, due to the virus, no Steam Excursions for 2020. They were hyping that 2021 will be active though.

Sad to hear but not completely unexpected with last week's announcement of pay cuts to salaried employees and mandatory four (4) months of one week per month of unpaid leave. Running any trips would probably not sit very well with those forced to work at 75% of their normal salary May-August.

Their strong commitment to steam in 2021 was great to hear.

We will recover. Hope springs eternal.

Rob Gardner

Wonder if they will use this time then to do various maintenance work on the heritage equipment.

I have heard (just a rumor) that with the way railroad business has been dropping...the end of the steam program was coming soon anyway. Just a rumor.
T7

Someone's brother that has a friend that has an uncle that knows somebody that works at the Union Pacific steam shop, has been saying they've been told the steam program is closing ever since I first went online back in about 1997.

Hasn't happened yet and hopefully won't be happening for many more years.

.

Nothing had been formally announced but at least one outing had been in the works when COVID-19 struck.

If you haven't watched the official UP video announcement, they did make a very strong commitment to operations in 2021 so I think it's pretty safe to say right now that there is no truth to any rumor of the program being shut down.

Rob Gardner

Too bad, but not entirely unexpected. 4014's return was nothing short of spectacular. I hope the others are simply stored for the future and not plinthed.
Love the UP!
Ned

No matter how big the crowds are...it's going to be hard to justify play-things when they are cutting non-agreement workers (management) and upper management is taking 25% pay cuts. This is the same virus that has hit NS...called the lack of bisiness.
T7

This is little different from the response at WP&Y, driven by the corresponding decision by cruise lines that serve it -- better under uncertainty to shut the effort down completely than use up 1472-days to little practical purpose.

Both 'uses' of the 4014 -- the one mentioned involving huge public crowds and recognition, and the more 'official' one involving morale visits to various UP organizational points -- involve potential infection spread out of all proportion to gains that could be realized in the existing climate of shelter-in-place/social distance. Note that the concern applies as much to the cohort traveling on the train itself as to those in the locations where crowds gather.

What would be interesting to know is precisely how UP is handling the extended shutdown and 'serviceable' storage of 4014 and 844 -- a topic that has been brought up repeatedly here in the past. I'm presuming at a minimum that for this extended a storage the locomotives will be blown down 'hot' followed by a good wash with passivating chemicals, followed by purge with dry nitrogen and afterward following monitored positive-pressure inert-gas protection. Presumably in a reasonably controlled environment without significant temperature excursions. This would be an interesting Ed Dickens video presentation, wouldn't it?

UP just announced they are pretty much completely shutting down the Jenks locomotive shop in North Little Rock, Arkansas for the month of May at least, and furloughed almost all the employees. They are blaming a massive drop in freight traffic. At this point, they can probably get by with simply parking any engines that fail.

Last year, UP pretty much completely shut down operations, permanently, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, which basically finished off the last bits of the Cotton Belt RR. The hump yard is(was?) being flat switched.

Times will be tough for a while.....

You guys need to read this article. There are plenty similar news items from other sources and you can also find similar articles for NS. King Coal is dead...and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the loss of freight business is because of the coronovirus and some of it is not. These railroads are going through massive changes and we should expect to see a lot of changes as time goes by.
T7
https://www.ketv.com/article/union-paci ... s/32225521

I was traveling through Nebraska a few days ago and the Union Pacific mainline was extremely busy. I went through Wyoming a few days before that and it was also extremely busy. However it looked like they were mostly moving empties back to the owners. Many sidings were filled with stored cars, some of which had not seen cars in a long time. Sidney had many stored locomotives. Most trains seemed to be moving with a very minimal amount of locomotives 2 or 3 even for trains close to 200 cars long. Seems changes are indeed coming. With longer trains and minimal locomotives, I can only imagine this will reduce the locomotive fleet down considerably (as well as the people who keep them running).

Oh my...Top brass at the UP will only receive $300K this year instead of $400k...but wait is that pay reduction only from May onward?

What about the $750K cash bonuses??

But wait...The mighty UP posted this the other day...


Don't believe all that comes out of Omaha...