Union Pacific “Mothball Fleet” In Tracy

A recent downturn in railroad revenues has turned the once-busy Union Pacific Railroad yard in Tracy into a pasture of sorts.

The UP’s yard here, which extends east from the Eleventh Street overpass downtown nearly to the town of Banta, has become the “rest home” for about 85 of the railroad’s locomotives that have been put out to pasture, stored here in hopes of a future rebound in freight shipments via rail.

The yard was constructed by the Southern Pacific and opened in the early 1960s, replacing the original SP yard downtown. Now Union Pacific property, the yard has been significantly less busy over the past two decades.

UP Stored Locomotives at Tracy (Photo)

The “mothball fleet,” which had previously been stored at the UP’s Stockton yard, comprises an impressive single-file line of engines in the railroad’s signature Armour Yellow paint visible at the stub end of Chrisman Road behind the various warehouses a few blocks off of Grant Line Road. Though partially obscured by parked freight cars, the locomotives can also be seen along Brichetto Road near Banta Road.

By most estimates, the stored units are not run of the mill outmoded “antiques” awaiting the scrapper’s torch. Many of the SD60M engines spotted in the yard date from around 1990, while the SD70M units in storage here were delivered to the Union Pacific in the early 2000s, according to a roster published by Trains magazine.

The locomotives arrived over the final weeks of August in a couple of moves from Stockton and will be held here indefinitely, pending an upturn in the railroad-related economy.

UP Stored Locomotives at Tracy (Photo)

We have also heard from various sources that the Union Pacific will no longer have locomotives assigned to active duty at the railroad’s Tracy yard office at the end of Sixth Street near MacArthur. Any freight moves in Tracy will reportedly be dispatched out of Stockton or Roseville.

(The California Northern Railroad, which leases the UP’s Westside Line down the San Joaquin Valley south from Tracy – its tracks mostly follow alongside Highway 33 – continues to park a locomotive tandem adjacent to the UP yard office for its weekday runs to their produce and agrichemical customers up and down the Valley.)

UP Stored Locomotives at Tracy (Photo)

Stored Union Pacific locomotives in the east end of the Tracy yard, near Banta and Brichetto Roads, on August 27, 2019

UPDATE: The mothball fleet was removed from the Tracy Yard in June 2023.

UP Tracy Yard (July 2023 Photo)

The Union Pacific’s yard in Tracy, Calif., along Brichetto Road, photographed on 30 July 2023. The mothball fleet of UP locomotives had been moved several weeks before.

– Photos and text by David Jackson.

Railroad Crossing Sign (Image)

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7 Comments

  1. Graeme

    Is the mothball still there to this day? I want to get photos.

    • TracyRail

      They are still there, and should be there for quite a while. Take either Chrisman Road or Banta Road to Brichetto Road, which parallels the yard.

  2. Magic

    UP engines moved somewhere. Empty tracks now 6/20/2023

    • TracyRail

      All gone away, earlier this Summer.

      Union Pacific's Tracy CA Yard (No Mothball Fleet)

  3. Don Starr

    Are they still there today as of August 9, 2023? Jim Vena will probably mothball a whole lot more…

    • TracyRail

      They’re gone, Don. They disappeared earlier this Summer.

      DJ

  4. G

    Thank you for the article.

    The engines are still visible via Google Street View, at least on Google Earth for Android. I’m really surprised that at least two of the 3-window SD60Ms still retained the red sill stripe, as seen with 2351 in the article. I don’t think I’ve seen a UP unit with that in well over 10 years.

    Were these units heavily vandalized before UP moved them? One set of images from Street View shows them as they would generally look in regular service, while another set of images shows them with compartment doors and even cab doors open, and “torpedo” air reservoirs hanging down, even sitting on the ground.

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