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Posted by Greg
on 1/7/2009, 4:51 pm, in reply to "Re: Greg Bunce Update?"
69.217.63.115
Don:
Things are slow here. There have been two rounds of layoffs and the railroad is running with a skeleton force. All the trains have been cut to 3 days a week except for the Channing switch engine. The mill in Ontonagon has extended it's shutdown until Feb. 1. We send an engine up to Ontonagon 3 days a week to keep the line plowed out. The pulpwood business is slow, all the paper mills have excess capacity and are taking down time. Louisiana Pacific at Sagola was shutdown for 2 weeks over Christmas and they weren't buying any wood for three weeks. If it wasn't for the storage car business we wouldn't have much to do. They continue to come in, but they can't continue much longer as we will soon run out of space. The railroad is aiming for 5000 in storage. The Wells line is almost full from Channing to Ralph, the Republic line is full from Channing to the Michigamme River bridge and the Nestoria Branch is full from Sidnaw to the other side of Covington. We even have cars shoved out the Marinette-Menominee Branch. We have to switch out cars for GE to be worked at Wells, right now there are 300 that are to be run thru the shop. As an example of how long it takes to switch them out, it took three days 24 hours a day to pull the cars off the Wells line, switch them out and shove them back. The storage business is an excellent predictor of the state of the economy. First it was centerbeam lumber flats, then cement hoppers, grain hoppers as the export market for grain slows down and now boxcars.
In other UP news you probably heard that Cliffs has laid off 300 miners and yesterday announced another 75. Pellet production in 2009 is slated to be 1/2 of 2008. The Tilden and Empire mines will both be close for a period of time. A source of mine at the LS&I says that those furloughed for the winter will probably not be called back in the spring.
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