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Here's a couple of observations to keep everybody red in the face. Water for steam locomotives does not just appear in the trackside water tower. RR's built resevoirs and water treatments plants in many places. There were places such as the southwest where water wasn't plentiful. The FT solved this problem. This was not why steam was replaced but it is a factor even it was a small one. The point is that steam required a considerable infrastructure to supply the elements it needed to operate. Everybody is looking at crew size wrong. The conductor and two brakemen have nothing to do with operating the engine. The brakemen, myself among them, were replaced in the 70's and on by EOT's and roller bearings and defect detectors and such. This corresponds with the observation that crew sizes decreased faster after 1972. But we were discussing locomotive technologies. It takes two people to run a steam engine, it takes one to run a diesel. It takes six people to run three steamers, it still takes one to run the diesel (not including helpers, I saw that coming). The number of miles travelled by a locomotive is also limited by how fast trains get over the road. The figure quoted earlier for diesel is about 250 miles a day or two divisions in the east. That doesn't sound too bad. I've had days I didn't get over one division in twelve hours. Also milage presumes that locomotives of any type are trying to accumulate as much milage as they can in a day. Not always so. OK, please continue the entertaining yet essentially pointless debate.
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