Remember that a steam engine was like a tailor-made suit. A railroad either came up with their own design, or worked with a builder to design an engine. Then the builder built exactly what the railroad wanted. So a railroad might go to ALCO and have 10 engines built, and later, if ALCO was too backed up with orders, they might go to Baldwin and have 10 more engines built using the same blueprints and specs as the first ten. Other than the builder's plates, the 20 engines may be virtually identical.
Of course, the USRA engines of 1918-19 were an attempt to standardize engines, such as having several wheel arrangements using the same boiler etc. That actually worked pretty well, but once diesels really got going I don't think anything would have stopped the conversion.
Bonas Well why did every railroad have to have its own shops instead of outsourcing? Like Sayre had like 5,000 employees. (or something like that) just for the little Lehigh Valley Ry.
Well why did every railroad have to have its own shops instead of outsourcing? Like Sayre had like 5,000 employees. (or something like that) just for the little Lehigh Valley Ry.
And that was just another nail in steam's coffin. A measurable percentage of those 5,000 were probably directly involved with the servicing of steam locomotives. There were very significant savings available by no longer having to operate coaling towers and ash pits, and the hordes in trades like boilermakers and such could be largely furloughed. All those roundhouses that have vanished were filled with the staff necessary to keep the steam engines running. The diesels could just roll on by.
Even if you could outsource the various tasks, the contractor would have to have nearly as many men, and be located in or near each terminal.
Just ask any operator of steam today, and they will tell you how labor intensive they are. In the steam era the same manhour equation was made of lots of men, to keep the hours as low as possible. That is one of the reasons restorations and overhauls today take considerably longer, since there is no longer an "army" to do all the work.
John
Heat loss killed steam. Us geezers just do not want to admit that. We insist on living in the past. Yes, steam power was great to see in action.
I have been to Mt Washington cog railway and the steamers are slowly on their way out. The diesels they run now are much more efficient. Push a button and they go.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Firelock76 Remember when you outsource something you lose control over it. Sometimes it works out OK, other times it doesn't, and when it doesn't you've either got to find someone else to outsource to or re-invent the wheel on your own premises. It's not something to be done lightly.
Remember when you outsource something you lose control over it. Sometimes it works out OK, other times it doesn't, and when it doesn't you've either got to find someone else to outsource to or re-invent the wheel on your own premises.
It's not something to be done lightly.
Railroad shops and individual builders for cars and especially locomotives had what was called in-sourcing. Mostly called inside contracting. When the shops had an upturn in work they would contract with crews from the in house work men that would earn extra money working on the overflow of work either before or mostly after their regular shift. The men would use the shops to erect and build locomotives to the contract. This worked out great for both the builder and the workmen. The builder or railroad would enter into a contract with the crew leader who was responsible for his crew to build or assemble to a specified time frame. The contractor could hire and fire whoever he wanted to get the job done in the quickest time. He was also responsible for paying his employees at contract end. The railroad or builder was responsible to ensure parts and equipment were available to fulfill the contracts. Most of Baldwins steam locomotives in the early twentieth century were erected using inside contractors. If the contractor failed to live up to his end of the contract I bet his regular job would also be in jeopardy. Union shops did not like the inside contracting but there was nothing the unions could do about it and most of the contract employees were union men on their regular job and got paid very well when the contract was finished.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
While some here have pointed out good examples of where the RRs attempted as best they could to come up with steam "standards" the real clear advantage diesels ended up with wasn't so much standardization, as interchangeability. While early diesels were often built to order individually, eventually they were all being built on assembly lines with components that were interchangeable between the same engine model and thats major components like trucks, generators, hoods, blowers, electrical components, etc. something similar in a steam engine would have required a major rebuild. The also required far less personel to make the repairs and maintain the locomotives. Now with diesels if you had a lot of the same model locomotive on your roster your ability to quickly make repairs or replace parts makes the overall costs of operating diesels far far more productive than holding onto your steam roster.
Have fun with your trains
The steam-to-diesel transition, including the subject of locomotive standardization, is extensively covered in the following two books: From Steam to Diesel by Albert Churella and Out of Steam by Jeffrey Schramm. I would recommend both books.
Outsourcing had yet to be invented and there was no means of effective transportation other than the means the railroad provided itself. Business with steam engines was not transacted with telephone calls - it was transacted in cold, hard steel. Words travel well for outsourcing, steel - not so much.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Outsourcing is a management technique that became a major factor only in the 1970's or so. Most businesses of all types did just about everything in-house and relatively little work was contracted out. Also, to use your example, LV was a smaller Class 1 road but still generated a sizable amount of traffic, especially before the anthracite mines played out. Also, as mentioned in prior posts, the one attempt at a contract locomotive shop in the steam era didn't work out for a variety of reasons.
In the 50's Missabe was looking at Baldwin getting out of the steam locomotive business. They bought enough parts to keep the Yellowstones alive until 1970. Once they got a taste of road diesels a few years later the couldn't get additional diesels fast enough. The parts were scrapped.
A standard diesel with a custom paint job was so vastly superior to the railroad than an optimized steam locomotive that there was just no need to tinker with the details. The same thing happened at N&W and countless others.
The war between diesel and steam wasn't won on the road, it was won in the shops.
Many of you are still ignoring what I already said. Many of the complex parts that a railroad shop couldn't construct themselves were fairly well standardized across the board. There weren't dozens of competing designs during the 1930's and the 1940's for superheaters, turbogenerators, valve gear, reversing gear, and so on for some instances. A few outside manufacturers supplied common designs across the American railroad industry with appliances where standardization is most important are concerned.
And many of the parts that would be unique to a specific class on a modern steam locomotive aren't the type of thing that routinely requires replacement. So that they were special orders constructed by the builders, an outside contractor, or in a railroad's backshop isn't as significant as it would be otherwise.
That standardization in appliances in fact is was a significant contributor to the early demise of steam on several lines. As cost went up as vendors went out of business and orders from survivors became special orders rather than off the shelf parts, repair cost skyrocketed. Even stuff that wasn't standardized that a railroad would go outside of the company for to acquire became expensive and difficult to acquire. The Nickel Plate had to resort to buying replacement engine rods from a Canadian company at a premium price, for instance, since the American vendors had disappeared or discontinued their production.
Trains reported years ago that the disappearance of steam that was causing the vendors to leave the business had led to Class 3 repairs on the Nickel Plate for their modern Berkshires to spiral to over $57,000 by spring 1958. They didn't provide a figure for several years earlier, but presumably it was a drastic increase.
Piper106a What killed steam was the amount of labor necessary to keep the engines running and serviceable and the frequency with which that service was required. Standardization had not effect on the amount of service that was required. Yes, but... Since every railroad had their own opinion on nearly everything, the majority of steam locomotive repair parts were always a short run, and their machine shop spent vast amounts of time setting up to make something different. Had there been thousands of truely identical 2-8-2s for example, shops could have set up for longer runs of parts, automated parts production, etc, all of which would have driven costs down. Plus when you standardize, later batches can have less problems than earlier batches as 'lessons learned' are applied. There is the high likelihood of having the 'same' problems solved earlier return in later batches when every batch is a custom build. Problems cost money and standardization would have reduced costs. .
What killed steam was the amount of labor necessary to keep the engines running and serviceable and the frequency with which that service was required. Standardization had not effect on the amount of service that was required.
Yes, but...
Since every railroad had their own opinion on nearly everything, the majority of steam locomotive repair parts were always a short run, and their machine shop spent vast amounts of time setting up to make something different. Had there been thousands of truely identical 2-8-2s for example, shops could have set up for longer runs of parts, automated parts production, etc, all of which would have driven costs down.
Plus when you standardize, later batches can have less problems than earlier batches as 'lessons learned' are applied. There is the high likelihood of having the 'same' problems solved earlier return in later batches when every batch is a custom build.
Problems cost money and standardization would have reduced costs. .
Steam engine runs exceeding 300 miles were the exception - not the rule. Most steam engines ran across a division and got changed at the division point. The real 'Time Sensitive' freights with the latest power would run 2 divisions. The maintenance required precluded longer runs with any kind of reliability.
When you have a non standardized locomotive fleet - Standardization costs money, not only in securing the standardized parts, but in the engineering necessary to fit the standardized parts to non-standard engines to bring them up to standard. With this 'new idea' occurring at the end of WW II, the carriers saw the hand writing on the ledger books of the costs of maintaining already standardized diesels, or the cost of bringing all their steam power up to standard. Had the idea of Standardization occurred in the 20's maybe things could have been different.
When you have X money to spend you spend it where it returns the most bang for the buck. Diesels were the bang for the buck. Several carriers did try various manufacturer diesel products - maintenance costs of those variety of diesels wrote the book on which to keep and which to scrap when the time came, and thus Baldwin, BLH, FM and finally Alco bit the dust. EMD survived and GE put a toe in the market in the late 60's and managed to survive and grow their business.
Most of you are aware of the standardization that occurred on the N&W, in the operation of most of its trains behind three classes: A, J and Y6, which were known as the "Modern Coal-Burning Steam Locomotive". What also was interesting was that N&W standardized servicing procedures as well, to provide quick turnaround of locomotives comparable to that of diesels.
lois
CSSHEGEWISCH If my memory serves me right, TRAINS had an article more than a few years ago about a firm that attempted in the late teens-early-20's to become a contract steam locomotive repair and rebuild shop.
If my memory serves me right, TRAINS had an article more than a few years ago about a firm that attempted in the late teens-early-20's to become a contract steam locomotive repair and rebuild shop.
I remember that. I'll see if I can track it down in case anyone found your post intriguing and wants to read it.
Edit: Found that article. It's titled "The Universal Backshop" and is by Eric Hirsimaki and John B. Corns. It's about Morgan Engineering's pioneering steps as a contract outfit for the locomotive repair business decades before such things became commonplace years after dieselization.
It's on pages 42-49 of the January 1988 issue.
It appears it was doomed after an initial period of success due to three primary reasons:
1. A national shop craft union strike.2. Higher repair cost due to a variety of factors over a railroad's own backshop. These included the cost of shipping locomotives to Alliance and each railroad maintaining their own inspection and storekeeping force there.3. Internal problems due to a shoestring budget, financial difficulties, poor business conditions, and a large debt load.
Differences in standards were met by a detailed contractual process that laid such things out. For instance some carriers welded on the inside of the firebox and reinforced the weld from the outside, some made all repairs using welds only, and others used a combination of welding and riveting. The contract would ensure such railroad specific standards were followed and each railroad had their own inspector on hand to ensure compliance with their own standards. And unique parts were handled by each railroad supplying the specific parts for its own locomotives with each user of the shop having their own storeroom and storekeeper to oversee their inventory.
So it appears as if the lack of standardization contributed significantly towards raising their cost over a railroad's own backshop at a time when most any Class 1 had ample business to keep their own backshop busy (And thus not much incentive to send that work out to an outside shop that was more expensive unlike recent decades where many survivors were heavily underutilized and many railroads were willing to pay a premium to get out from under that overhead).
Steam always required a lot of maintenance around the clock and large crews were on duty to service the locomotives at each roundhouse and back shop. The water and fuel facilities also were maintained around the clock and when the first road diesels were tested, the water and fuel stops were by passed and a new day dawned on the railroads. The railroads operating in the Southwest area of the US had to haul water to several locations so the diesels eliminated the need for water also. Operating costs were a large factor in changing over to diesels.
CZ
If my memory serves me right, TRAINS had an article more than a few years ago about a firm that attempted in the late teens-early-20's to become a contract steam locomotive repair and rebuild shop. The business model was based on providing an alternative to railroad-owned shops during a period of labor unrest. The concept sounded good in theory but didn't work out so well in practice, primarily because each road had its own set of parts for various components. Standardized parts for one road were rarely compatible with standardized parts of another road.
A few locomotives were actually rebuilt by this shop but the high inventory costs involved made the concept less attractive financially than originally assumed.
There was a lot of standardization in appliances across railroads. I don't think much was lost in the other components being custom ordered since they're not things that would typically need replacing.
Quite the opposite. It was the master mechanics council of steam locomotive master mechanics that standardized nut and bolt thread sizes. It was the railroads that standardized time. Before that every builder had their own nuts and bolts, and every town had their own time. Many railroads tried to standardize everything from brooms to locomotives. By the time steam locos dropped the fires for good there were many parts that would fit several classes of locomotives. Look at the PRR. The self proclaimed standard railroad of the world. At one time they had more than five thousand 2-8-0 on the roster in only four classes. The K4s pacifics were the standard passenger hauler from 1914 to the end of steam.
I think lack of standardization killed of a lot more first generation diesels than it did steam engines. In the old days if you could work on one steam engine you could work on them all. Many 'roads assumed the same with diesels. Whoops! A EMD wasn't an ALCO which wasn't a Baldwin which wasn't a Fairbanks-Morse, and so on. Suddenly having a good machine shop and foundry on hand wasn't good enough anymore.
Making a long story short, EMD wound up on top, for a variety of good reasons.
I think the term "American Standard" is a little misleading. Even though they shared the same wheel arrangement , the American's, pre-1900 and post varied a great deal. Some examples form the late 1890's weighed almost three times as much as Civil War engines. Driver diameters ranged from the 30"ish narrow gauge engines up to 86" on NYC's 999. The Pennsylvania was an early proponent of standardizing locomotive components, starting in the late 1860's. But these components were utilized in at least a dozen classes initially,ranging from 0-6-0T through 2-8-0. Steam locomotive era railroads tended to taylor design to the service the engine would be used in.
As Mr. JRBERNIER noted, EMD really did the best job of selling the railroads on the "one size fits all" concept. Need more tractive effort? just MU some more units. We can even offer you the same prime mover in a switcher form, or put two of 'em in an E7! Pretty neat concept. Had to simplify the parts and maintenance end of things. What's to lose? Well, for starters, steam is just too cool to watch!
Ulrich,
The American Standard lasted quite a long time, but by 1900 Ten Wheeler's and Consolidations were the normal power on most railroads. Locomotives were always a reflection of the Master Mechanic for a railroad. Things like cylinder size, appliances, and driver diameter seemed to be personal 'touches'. Even all the USRA 'clones' had small differences,and the American Standards all had many differences between them.
By the end of steam, a 5,000-6,000 hp 4-8-4 was as close to a standard locomotive as you will get. Diesel locomotive replacements at the time were also rather different from builder to builder - It took EMD to reign in all of this individualism and push standardization on the industry.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Prior to about 1900 almost all steam locomotives were of the 4-4-0 American STANDARD type. Sure, there were variations in tender capacities, fuel, and driver size, but the overall design was pretty much the same across the board. So what happened after 1900 that changed the steam locomotive from a versatile creature that could haul coal or passengers to one that had to be designed for specialized tasks and that required railroads to roster many different types of wheel arrangements? I understand that tonnage increased, but still, wouldn't two or three basic designs have been preferable to 10 or even 20 or more?
As far as I'm aware, Canadian Pacific had the most standardized fleet of locomotives, with most being of the ten wheeler or of the Pacific type. On the other hand CN had one of the most diverse fleets...which surely must have been problematic for shops who had to maintain a larger parts inventory and a mechanical force that had to be trained to service each of type of engine.
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