Stored locomotives at Northport, Ne.

[mowingman]

While on vacation, we passed through Northport, Ne, where a major wye leads to Alliance, Ne., and another leg to Wyoming. Wyoming coal is routed through here.
There are about 40 or 50, freshly painted, GP and SD locomotives stored in a yard by the wye. Reporting marks were HLCX and GATX. All refurbished and ready to lease I suppose. Possible stored due to the decreased amount of Wyoming coal being shipped.

[John_Perkowski]

Progress Rail, Inc, the corporate successor owner of EMD, has a shop at Alliance. While google maps shows the shop as having locomotives on the various tracks to bays, Progress reports the shop is a freight car shop.

Clearly, though, since it's their property, that makes it a good place to store locomotives it owns and then first leases to other companies, such as GATX.

As an aside, I can remember when GM-EMD was in the direct to user road leasing business, back in the 90s and early 00s.

As a second aside, BNSF has a healthy storage line in North Kansas City, MO--Murray Yard (30 units by my count).

[MEC407]

Reporting marks were HLCX . . .

Some recent history on HLCX for any readers who aren't familiar:

Helm Financial (HLCX) was purchased by First Union (FURX) in 2014. First Union was a subsidiary of Wells Fargo. In 2015, First Union purchased General Electric's railcar and locomotive leasing division (GECX). In early 2016, Wells Fargo changed the name of First Union to Wells Fargo Rail.

Where it gets interesting and/or slightly complicated is that GE retained ownership of the GECX reporting mark, which means it's unlikely you'll see any Wells Fargo locomotives with that reporting mark these days; however, Wells Fargo does own the HLCX reporting mark, which means they can still use it whenever/wherever they want.

(Back when Helm had some GE locomotives in their lease fleet, they used the reporting mark HLGX for those locomotives. But I just checked the AAR reporting mark database and it appears the HLGX mark no longer exists.)