Think of leasing a locomotive the same way you lease a house. You move to a different city, you give up the lease -- the house isn't torn down, it's leased to someone else. You have some kids, you lease a bigger house. Your children move on, you lease a smaller house. You leased the house when the economy was booming and had to pay through the nose. Now the economy is soft and you can move to another house that will do just as well with a lower rent. You offer your first landlord to stay, if he reduces the rent, but he doesn't, so off you go.
"Returning to lessor" by no means says that the locomotive will be scrapped. A locomotive returned to lessor doesn't mean it is worn-out, deficient, or useless. It often just means it is high cost -- and cost depends on the terms of the lease. When the lease expires the lessor offers the locomotives to whomever is willing to pay the highest lease rate. Often the lessor has another lessee willing to pay more. Often the market is soft when the lease expires, and the lessor knows that to get a long-term lease from a railroad he will have to accept a low rate, so the lessor takes the locomotives back, holds them off the market or leases short term, and waits to see if the market gets tight again, so he can lease long-term at a high rate.
Right now carloadings are soft, so railroads don't need as many locomotives as they did a year ago. Locomotives with high cost leases, that can be returned, will be returned. It's just business. It doesn't necessarily say anything positive or negative about the locomotive itself.
RWM
Lyon_Wonder wrote:I heard a rumor on the discussion forum at locophotos.com, BNSF might remove Ex-BN SD70MACs that were delivered just prior to the merger from lease sometime around 2010. http://www.locophotos.com/Read.php?ThreadID=7541 Supposedly, the idea is to make BNSF a greener, more environmentally friendly railroad. It would be better to remove older DC locos like Dash 8s and 60 series engines from lease first before they start messing with MACs, which would likely reappear on consists in the form of HELM/HLCX/NREX engines. Heck, BNSF still has 1970s-vintage SD40/45-2s on the roster, and I can’t see Dash-2 engines completely disappearing from the railroad anytime soon, especially the 4 axle GP38 types.
It would be more likely to happen because BN agreed to terms that include either an expensive buyout or if the lessor has indicated that they want to reset lease rates significantly higher. Then I could see BNSF sending them back to the lessor.
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