Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
My understanding is the railroads started loosing money during the 30's. Perhaps the 4% ROI during the 1940s was a high point caused by the war. Railroads were making lots of money and defering a lot of maintainence. What was the ROI during the 1930's and how did the post WWI ROI compare to the post WW2 period. Expanding the time frame might make things clearer. <br /> <br />EMD's financing plan should have actually improved ROI over what it would have been in the early years of dieselization, since the railroads were not paying the full cost of the equipment. There are other factors and numbers on both sides of the issue to consider, such as productivity i.e. revenue per employee. Also steam maintainence was largely PM done by lower wage workers. Dieselization meant higher skills were needed such as electricians, etc. A similar situation occurred with early business automation, where many green eye-shade accountants and clerks were replaced by expensive computers and higher paid programmers. ROI didn't improve, but eventually productivity did.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag