Where Railroads Store Unneeded Railcars

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:10]Hello again, rail fans. I've often said that a lot of my videos come directly from you guys, and so it is in today's episode. The question comes from down in the comments section, and it's a good one. What do railroads do with their rail cars when they're not using them?

[00:00:28]Things like economic downturns, recession, and technology developments can cause certain types of rail cars to not be needed for a while or ever again.

[00:00:39]Uh so railroads have to find a place to store those cars. You can't just put them out in a field somewhere on abandoned farm or or just abandoned property. They got to have tracks underneath them. And those tracks have to also be not needed. So that presents a challenge for the railroad sometimes.

[00:00:58]So today we're going to chase down a train that's putting some unneeded rail cars in a place that is also unneeded.

[00:01:07]So let's go.

[00:01:10]A CSX paving crew is doing scheduled maintenance on a road crossing in downtown Hawthorne, Florida. In this age of automated everything, some things still require hands-on skill to do correctly. Using a K skid steer loader, they scoop out hot asphalt from a dump truck and put it exactly where it's needed, beside the rail. A man on the ground signaling when to start dumping and when to stop. Then the men spread it with rakes the oldfashioned way. In the middle of this action, the trains are still running. In a few minutes, down comes M453 and the men move out of the way.

[00:02:01]M453 is daily mixed freight to Miami with intermediate traffic for Okachchobee and West Palm. 453 graphically illustrates the variety of rail cars used on today's trains from hoppers, gondas, tanks, box cars, centerbeam flats, and auto carriers. The majority of these cars are either loaded or headed to be loaded. Well, I guess that's pretty much true of nearly every rail car. But what happens when business slows down? When one industry suffers reduced demand and fewer of these cars are needed. Where do you park all those idle rail cars?

[00:02:41]Railroad yards aren't really an option for storing cars unless they too are part of the slowdown. Active yards are where trains are built and taken apart.

[00:02:51]Railroads want to keep their online yards open and fluid to handle the business that's still running. Sidings are an option, but only in the short term. In 2025, I stumbled upon a string of auto racks being stored in the siding at Orange Heights, Florida. But by early the next year, they were gone.

[00:03:28]The same with these inner motor cars I caught at Palatka earlier that same year. These were being pulled out of Jacksonville to be stored in the siding at Satsuma. They sat there for a few weeks but were then moved or put back in service. This train demonstrates the size of the problem of storing rail cars. They are big and they have to stay on railroad tracks.

[00:03:53]In Tampa, a business downturn in one of its sectors was bad news for CSX, but it also created a small opportunity.

[00:04:02]Rockport Yard was a 24/7 beehive of phosphate trains coming and going, a railroad transloading yard and a waterfront. Six mine locals in and six out every day. But Florida's phosphate business slowed down and CSX's export fertilizer business is now just a trickle here at Rockport. Now instead of hustling these flip top guns in and out every day, they are being stored here.

[00:04:30]Turns out Rockport is a perfect spot for storing rail cars. With 10 yard tracks and a lead, the yard is nearly 3 m long.

[00:04:40]It's perfect for storing cars while still handling its sparse phosphate business. Right now, it's mostly phosphate cars being stored in here with a couple of inner modal flats, but it's big enough to handle just about anything should the need arise. I'm thinking this might be a heck of an interotal terminal someday. Long tracks, a ship capable waterfront, and close access to a four-lane concrete paved roadway only 3.8 mi from an interstate highway. Other secondary yards across the Bone Valley are also storing unneeded cars.

[00:05:19]On a windy Sunday morning, I'm at South Lakeland where an old BNO bay window caboose appears on track 2. It's actually not classified as a caboose anymore. CSX calls them shoving platforms because that's all they're used for. Today, CSX is shoving 95 empty coal hoppers out of Winston Yard and into a storage location. Coal is another commodity that's been severely diminished across the country. In recent years, power plants by the dozens have switched from coal to natural gas fuel, and that's left hundreds of coal hoppers with nothing to do. These are among them. They are Trinity Rails rapid discharge longitudinal bay hoppers, RDLs.

[00:06:04]For a number of years, cars just like these brought coal into Tampa Electric's Big Bend power plant. But now, Big Bend is predominantly gas fired. So CSX has to find a place to store them. Today, these hoppers are being shoved into a dead-end spur at, ironically, another power plant. From overhead, we can see how the bottom doors were built lengthwise or parallel to the rail, enabling more door space, which created the rapid discharge that Trinity brags about. Watching a whole train roll by at 10 m an hour was a little tedious, but I was waiting to see what was doing this shoving. Turns out it was a single EMD SD70 AC locomotive. Pretty impressive.

[00:06:59]After it passed, I packed up and went out to the place where the cars were to be stored, Lakeland's Macintosh power plant. This used to be a major coal burner, too, but not anymore. They too have switched to natural gas, and therefore don't need the 1.9 mi of track that they have here. Lakeland had its own coal hopper fleet, but they must have sold it off. This is the end of the line on the 3 and 1/2 mile park spur and probably hasn't seen a train up this far in many moons, so the rails are pretty rusty. We'll see if 95 hoppers and an SD70 AC brighten them up any. It took them almost 50 minutes to go the 7.8 mi from South Lakeland to the final curve here on the Park Spur. The crossing signal at Comi Road waited until the absolute last second to activate. No doubt account rusty rail, but it finally worked. At one point, they had to stop to put the caboose in a runaround track so it wouldn't get stuck inside the plant. Then they had to pull back out on the spur main and shove the hoppers on into the plant. When they get them spotted, the conductor will set handbrekes on these cars to make sure they don't go anywhere. And this will be their new home until Trinity Rail decides what to do with them next. The Macintosh power plant is just one more location with an empty railroad track that will now be used for car storage.

[00:08:25]It's likely that the power company will charge a fee to Trinity for storing its rail cars here. And what do you know?

[00:08:32]Those rusty rails did get shined up after the passage of just one train over them, and it was empty.

[00:08:45]Back down the line a mile and a half, the park spurs major customer is Saddle Creek Logistics, a distribution firm that gets merchandise in by rail and then distributes it regionally by tractor trailer. The local L763 brings in box cars several times a week. It's usually a combination of TTX double door T boxes, next load any road, and Cryotrans lineage refrigerated cars. By the way, I shot this train on a different day from the hopper car storage train, so no worries about him getting blocked in by this local. I stopped for lunch on the way home at a place that's been getting a lot of buzz on social media. Station House Barbecue in the Seol Heights section of Tampa.

[00:09:30]Founded by a local firefighter as a side hustle, the place exploded into a popular lunch spot. They make a Cuban sandwich with smoked pork instead of roasted. But the guy at the counter told me about the burger made out of ground smoked brisket. Looks like a regular burger, but tastes nothing like you've ever had before. Two patties, two kinds of cheese. I didn't get any sides because I didn't need any. It was about 12 bucks with a tip and delicious.

[00:10:00]By the way, you probably won't see any box cars being stored right now. The rail network is facing a shortage of them. So, if you do find box cars stored away in a siding or secondary yard or on a short line siding somewhere, they are probably nearing the end of their service life and headed for scrap. Got a new sign back there on the fence. This one is an Amtrak no trespassing sign.

[00:10:25]And I'm not a a collector of no trespassing signs, but that's what I thought was worthy of a spot on the fence. It was uh donated by a a a person who wanted to remain anonymous. So there, I appreciate the sign. Please uh write your comments in the comments section down below. I read them all and try to reply to as many as I can. Like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't done that. That's a big help when you do that for me. And share this video among your friends. Uh if you if you like it and you and you think it's worthy of uh sharing, that that also helps an awful lot. and let's make plans to meet up again somewhere soon somewhere out there on the high iron.

[00:11:06]And until we do, this is Danny Harmon out.