I sent info from this thread to a friend who is an active UP fan and here is his explanation:
The locomotives are all lease units and UP did not renew the leases. Thus, instead of the railroad carrying the finance charges for locomotives just sitting around, some leasing company that sold shares to the public is taking the loss. It may look ugly, but not to UP.
As he mentioned UP is not taking a hit on those locos, although somebody somewhere (shareholders of the leasing companies) are taking that hit. And I'm sure this also indicates that the UP traffic has decreased during this recession.
Peteski