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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by solzrules You people are nuts.[/quote] Detailed discussions have no bearing on the collective sanity (or lack thereof) of the forum participants. Now, if someone was to act on this information and go out and buy 10,000 shares of Ralph's New Millenium Steam Locomotive Company, now that would be nuts....... [quote]QUOTE: If all of their "studies" showed that it was cost effective to go with a diesel engine as opposed to steam it sure seems to me that the railroads have already made that descision. I don't think they ALL could be wrong. [/quote] The salient point of this discussion was that (1) the diesel buyers could not foresee that relatively short shelf life of those first generation diesels, I am sure they expected the same level of longivity as they had experienced with steam and electric locomotives, and (2) GM/EMD did "sex up" some of the performance data in order to make the sale, promising returns on the investment that never came about. Because of #1 and #2 above, the railroads were willing to accumulate unprececented debt to finance the purchase of these first diesels, and the resultant industry ROI went down in the two decades immediately following the mass dieselization. They weren't "wrong" per se, they were just a bit short-sighted. [quote]QUOTE: Steam engines require a ton of maintenance. It they could build a low maintenance steam engine that was profitable for the railroad (or any industry), I think they would have done that by now.[/quote] Analogy: Coal fired power plants require immensely more maintenance than natural gas fired power plants, yet the cost of the power coming from those coal fired power plants is now roughly half that of those natural gas power plants. What it comes down to today is whether the lower cost of the fuel makes up for the increased maintenance. If there was such a thing as production line steam engines being made today, it may very well be that their cost performance would easily beat that of diesels. EPA compliance would probably be the big hang up now. [quote]QUOTE: Steam is deadly. Studies don't show what happens to employees in a boiler explosion. Pray you never see it. It is gruesome, to say the least. Why anyone would use steam as a mechanical force when there are alternate methods is beyond me. (Could insurance costs have anything to do with the cost effectiveness of steam?)[/quote] Just for the record, how many instances of modern (1940's) steam boiler explosions can you recall? I doubt that such a likelyhood was prevelant enough to even enter the calculations of steam vs diesel costs. [quote]QUOTE: You cannot control a steam engine with the same prescision as an electrical motor. Modern eletronics can control an AC motor with prescision unheard of from any DC motor in the 1st generation diesels, and certainly better than any steam engine.[/quote] Again, not sure if precision control played a role in the steam vs diesel debate. We do know that now computer controls can make steam propulsion as precise as any other form of locomotive prime mover. Pollution control may be another matter though.
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