Why Railroads Don't Want New Locomotives Anymore

Some of the most expensive locomotives in America are doing absolutely nothing, sitting cold in storage while freight trains elsewhere keep getting longer and heavier. That sounds backward, because railroads still need enormous amounts of horsepower, yet the companies moving that freight have spent years discovering that the locomotive they already own is often more valuable than the new one they could buy. And once they figured out how to move more freight with fewer engines, an industry built around selling hundreds of new locomotives every year suddenly found its biggest customers disappearing.