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The problem is not coal v. oil nor tractive effort curves, but pulling fast, heavy trains. It has been ever since the decade after dieselization, within a decade after dieselizing on fast, light trains and slow, heavy trains, on which the diesel's advantages are most apparent. It is well documented if not fully realized that diesels are very, very expensive on fast heavy trains. TRAINS, July 1970, January 1974, May 1986, and April 1990, the last recording Santa Fe experience that 5 hp/ton is about the economic max. In recent years fuel costs have further cramped train speeds. Higher speeds, on the other hand, not only improve customer service, but increase productivity of the physical plant. The railroad overcapacity problem was solved over a decade ago. Now it is an undercapacity problem. TRAINS, May 2008The non-debatable shortage is not oil but capital. Anyone want to argue the current federal and trade deficits are sustainable? For some impeccable Establishment credentials anticipating sharply higher interest rates, see Peter Peterson, Running on Empty, and Robert Hormats, The Price of Liberty.Electrification has never been the way to save on capital. Don't even suggest electrification before reading Pinkepank's July 1970 article. The power industry has its own investment problems. The standard argument for powerplant centralization, however, shows the capacity problem of mobile (decentralized) generation. During WWII the central power plant load averaged 16% of fleet horsepower and never exceeded 22%. (Barriger's foreword, When the Steam Roads Electrified)This means high horsepower mobile generation will have considerable, and very expansive, excess capacity.The MYC Niagara, on the other hand, deliberately built with excess capacity, was more powerful at 60 mph than a three unit E7 and cost less to operate, and that without poppet valves, combustion chamber, or more efficient exhaust. TRAINS, March 1984. Of course the capital costs were but a small fraction of diesel. Too bad one was never tried on a Flexi-Van.Recently on this line there was corroboration that the N&W A hauled 7500 ton trains over 60 mph. Apparently it did this in regular service. Judging by the figures in Jan 1974 TRAINS, this is the work of 4 1/2 SD45s.Let's see if 1218 can do this again. Let's see what three current 4300 hp units can do too. Let us compare present costs, capital and operating, and let us anticipate future costs, fuel and interest. And we might anticipate what an A with a Porta/Wardale boiler, Lempor exhaust, and other improvements might do too. The railroads will see this as a godsend, if it ever sinks in and the costs check out. We do not have to wrangle about anything. Defining a problem is half of solving it. Let's subordinate the subordinate considerations and avoid personal wrangling. Let's also try to do things economically, as opposed to the wastrel ways of recent decades.Rush Loving, The Men Who Loved Trains, paints a vivid portrait of Stuart Saunders' highly non-economic ways of running Penn Central. One would not expect anything better at N&W.Jeff Goodell, Big Coal, is an excellent recent study of the coal/rail/power complex.
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