Jones1945 Was it really called “the weed electric railroad”
No, in fact, it was the WEEMS Electric Railway, as covered in the contemporary trade press, as here
http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/odweems.Html
and in
patent 376567
And I was wrong. Testing reached the 150mph range, but actual service speed would be quicker than that. Think mail and express from New York via Philadelphia to Chicago in less than four hours, before 1890...
I retrieved the correct information on this 'late' while looking up references to that cockamamie Hyperloop predecessor touted, during the great age of LBJ's Keynesian stimulus of ground transportation, by the inimitable WHOOSH corporation. (It's patent 3630153, if you're curious...)
Interestingly enough, there is something I had not known about, an actual passenger interpretation of the system. This in fact might be the thing that so inspired that unsung science-fiction author John Jacob Astor in the early pages of A Journey In Other Worlds. Patent 406804.
Overmod Similarly, I'd like the look of the Q2 much better if it didn't have that ghastly open space with nothing in it between the front running-board side panels and ... anything near them ...
Similarly, I'd like the look of the Q2 much better if it didn't have that ghastly open space with nothing in it between the front running-board side panels and ... anything near them ...
This is exactly the reason why I prefer the looks of Q1 to Q2; it looked like something was missing at the front end. I am not impressed by the as-delivered version of Q1 though. I love how Pennsy removed those cumbersome plates from her and kept the streamlined "skyline", the cab and the lower front end. Those 77 inches drivers also make her looks sexier than her younger sisters. (bigger is better? )
(Nice model of Q1, but the pilot wheels should have made larger)
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Jones1945I still prefer the looks of Q1 to M1
Provided, as you do, it's the version without the goofy side sheets and bullet nose.
Similarly, I'd like the look of the Q2 much better if it didn't have that ghastly open space with nothing in it between the front running-board side panels and ... anything near them ... at so many angles it was seen in service.
Here, though, it's shown as intended...
Overmod The practical beginning of modern balancing, Eksergian's paper, came out in 1928, and even in the mid-Thirties some people who should have known better* had not figured out what was involved... ...PRR should have considered when the time came for state-of-the-art balancing to be applied.
The practical beginning of modern balancing, Eksergian's paper, came out in 1928, and even in the mid-Thirties some people who should have known better* had not figured out what was involved...
...PRR should have considered when the time came for state-of-the-art balancing to be applied.
I absolutely agree. Many say Pennsy's management style was conservative and slow on the uptake, I partially agree that since they were the only one railroad "had the guts" to use a fleet of the duplex and built a direct-drive steam turbine engine in the States. But at the same time, it seems that they were very slow on updating their knowledge of various cutting-edge technologies. This caused them a lot of troubles and cost them a lot of money; from simple things like the mechanical stoker to balancing, front end throttle etc. They were not only underestimated the potential of M1; probably the only Mountain Class in the States that could fit into the "superpower" category; they also underestimate their capacity to lead the railroad industry.
Back to 1944, upgrade the design of the M1 with all up-to-date technologies: lightweight rods, roller bearings, state-of-the-art balancing, front end throttle, Franklin poppet valves, Q1-style streamlining etc. The new M1 should be powerful and fast enough to handle the post-war passenger traffic. But I can understand that during the peak of wartime traffic, PRR's management thought there was a need to build a fleet of powerful and fast engine like T1 and Q2.
Anyway ...... I still prefer the looks of Q1 to M1
Jones1945what we could have had if Pennsy canceled their last 100 K4s (#5400 - #5499) in 1927 and 1928 and replaced them with M1 or M1a?
The answer is likely what you get when you fill in the missing part after realizing 'cluster' is only half a word.
The practical beginning of modern balancing, Eksergian's paper, came out in 1928, and even in the mid-Thirties some people who should have known better* had not figured out what was involved. In order for a locomotive with 72" wheel to be able to run at "full K4 speed" more would be required, and the PRR motive-power people would have been highly aware of that. (Note that they did not recognize much of the point of Voyce Glaze's balancing even as late as the AAR testing, even with the anomalously high speed staring them in the face.)
By the point in the 1930s that the implications of good balancing, even 'retrofitted', was fully realized, PRR was on to the 'bigger and better' thing, rather pointedly avoiding the characteristics of something like a C&O T1 at the time in favor of a piece of experimental science fiction justifying its "M1-plus" cost with M1-plus available features (including a reasonable compromise between M1 and K4 wheel size combined with lower augment).
They certainly figured out about the T class, even if it had to be a learning experience partway shoved down their throats; they never did try improving the M1 even though the N&W J was legitimately in their corporate control and other railroads, UP being one that came to mind, did precisely the kind of kit-of-improvements on their 4-8-2 (suggestively numbered 7002) that PRR should have considered when the time came for state-of-the-art balancing to be applied.
Porthole window which you can find on the lower front end of T1s was one of the common characteristics of Streamline Moderne. But a ship-prow-style smoke box was not common for streamlined trains. Loewy's design for the two prototypes T1 of 1942 reminds me of The McKeen Railmotor. Note in Loewy's conceptual design for T1, there were 4 portholes instead of 3. Probably a coincidence.
Moving it from Trains Forum for the record:
Overmod selector Is that report available for reading/download? Here you go: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001615135
selector Is that report available for reading/download?
Here you go:
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001615135
Overmod Meanwhile there is the parallel, and far more important, question why PRR never considered a 4-8-4 in those critical years, the logical follow-on to Pacifics so many other places.
M636CSo since the M1 basically used the K5 boiler with an added combustion chamber ...
Don't you have that kinda backward? The M1 with internal steam pipes predates the K5, and my understanding has always been that the K5 boiler was derived from the I1 Decapod design.
Hard to believe that a boiler suitable for an eight-coupled (let alone ten-coupled size now with deep water legs) wouldn't be sufficient for any six-coupled locomotive without going to obligatory larger fireboxes requiring stokers. When PRR went to larger fireboxes it was for 'enlargement' of the M1 (into a design with five driving axles instead of a booster), so presumably the point of any "P6" would be to implement the moral equivalent of a fourth driving axle via a high-speed booster ... something PRR didn't make nearly the use of as the it-was-invented-here NYC.
Meanwhile, of course, with all those K4s and then increasingly little for them to do with the high-speed electrification progressing, cheap doubleheading was FAR better use of capital than some Hudson with only enhanced starting TE and some high-speed nominal economy to recommend it.
Meanwhile there is the parallel, and far more important, question why PRR never considered a 4-8-4 in those critical years, the logical follow-on to Pacifics so many other places. At least part of this is timing (and in this respect PRR was spared the kind of horror it encountered with, say, the L5 electrics) in that true express Northerns weren't really 'there' until the advent of proper balancing knowledge, several years into the Thirties, but cost effective roller rods and the like not until much later (PRR having firsthand experience via N&W, so a great deal of this is circumstantial and not conservative hidebound balking at the considerable added cost) when the siren call of duplex low augment was at its height and as yet untainted by practical road experience.
Don't you have that kinda backward? The M1 with internal steam pipes predates the K5, and my understanding has always been that the K5 boiler was derived from that, rather than the other way round.
Hard to believe that a boiler suitable for an eight-coupled wouldn't be sufficient for any six-coupled locomotive without going to obligatory larger fireboxes requiring stokers. When PRR went to larger fireboxes it was for 'enlargement' of the M1 (into a design with five driving axles instead of a booster), so presumably the point of any "P6" would be to implement the moral equivalent of a fourth driving axle via a high-speed booster ... something PRR didn't make nearly the use of as the it-was-invented-here NYC.
I wonder what kind of powerful monster we would have had if Pennsy decided to make a 4-6-4 based on a K5.
If you compare an NYC J3 to an NYC L3, they look pretty much the same...
So since the M1 basically used the K5 boiler with an added combustion chamber, I'd expect Pennsylvania P6 (or would it be a P1?) to look similar to an M1, with a longer firebox and one less driving axle...
Peter
daveklepper Jones1945, your NYCentral T.E. for Hudsons is without the booster operating, I presume. With booster, then equal to RR K-5?
Jones1945, your NYCentral T.E. for Hudsons is without the booster operating, I presume. With booster, then equal to RR K-5?
Thank you for the question, Dave. As you may note that the booster engine was not a device fitting the style of PRR management; when I compare K5 and NYCentral's Class J Hudsons, I used the T.E without the booster engine. If I estimate the TE of K5 with a booster engine, that would be 65000 to 70000lbf! Note Pennsy and Baldwin successfully increase their Pacific's TE from 44,460 lbf of K4 to at least 54,675 lbf of K5 #5698, even though the FA was a bit "below average".
I wonder what kind of powerful monster we would have had if Pennsy decided to make a 4-6-4 base on a K5.
Overmod...This from a railroad with some of the best 4-8-4s ever built, and if there were any use for a 4-6-4 over it, they'd have built it.
OvermodI was expecting someone might raise the idea that PRR did not use Hudsons because Alco was not a usual supplier. Remember that the 'first' Hudson design wasn't Alco's, it was Baldwin's, to C.H. Bilty's spec, probably the first locomotive truly documented to run over 100mph sustained -- and a logical example for PRR to study if they had wanted a 4-6-4.
Milwaukee Road class F6 by Baldwin which served in MILW system for 24 years! An early Hudson class built in 1930 got overshadowed by the overrated F7 by Alco. The first thing caught my attention was the design of the leading truck of this class, reminds me of the trucks using on PRR T1 and C&O M-1. By the way, If PRR wanted to order Hudson in 1930s, why didn't they keep purchasing from Baldwin or build them in their own shops instead of buying them from a company which they wanted to keep their distance from it.
Yeah, just a matter of timing really. Like all things in life and history, it's all about timing.
I suppose they could have scrapped 100 or so fairly new K4's for Hudsons like later PRR management did with the T1's and Q2's for Diesels, but management at that time wasn't so reckless.
Certainly could have used better timing here and there in my own life but the arrow points one way and one must deal with the consequences as to where you place your markers along the line. C'est la vie.
The G2sa is pretty, but Mr. Klepper meant this:
This from a railroad with some of the best 4-8-4s ever built, and if there were any use for a 4-6-4 over it, they'd have built it.
I was expecting someone might raise the idea that PRR did not use Hudsons because Alco was not a usual supplier. Remember that the 'first' Hudson design wasn't Alco's, it was Baldwin's, to C.H. Bilty's spec, probably the first locomotive truly documented to run over 100mph sustained -- and a logical example for PRR to study if they had wanted a 4-6-4.
Note that almost any conceivable Hudson (or Baltic) would require a stoker. PRR didn't even put stokers on the K5s, by intent (and it's arguable whether they would have if the Government hadn't mandated it as late as the mid-Thirties) and that in my opinion was a shortsighted waste, but I think it's a strong argument why PRR did not adopt one at the time.
daveklepper Back to PRR experimentals. It would be interesting to compare the PRR K-5 with the contemporary NYCentral J-1 to see why the PRR never considered a Hudson. And I think the post-WWII Reading Pacific might also well be included in the comparison. Not the CP Post WWII Pacific, which was specifically a light-duty branchline locomotive.
Back to PRR experimentals. It would be interesting to compare the PRR K-5 with the contemporary NYCentral J-1 to see why the PRR never considered a Hudson.
And I think the post-WWII Reading Pacific might also well be included in the comparison. Not the CP Post WWII Pacific, which was specifically a light-duty branchline locomotive.
The PRR K5 #5698 had a much higher TE (54,675 lbf) than NYC J-1 or even J-3a Dreyfuss Super Hudson (41,680 lbf). Overmod mentioned the main reason of why there was not a single Hudson in PRR system. Let's review a quote of his reply:
"PRR wouldn't buy Hudsons from Baldwin for the reason I gave earlier: they had just spent to get 475 K4s, including 200 from Baldwin, some as late as 1928 (into the real Hudson era). By the time they were looking at better power, it was into the era of the true high-speed 4-8-4 and there was no point in considering anything but eight-drivered power -- had the divided-drive 84"-drivered locomotive worked out there would have been no need for a trivial little Hudson, and modern balancing made an 80"-drivered locomotive perfectly fast enough for what 'used' to demand an 84" wheel. (You will note the somewhat lamentable history of 84" drivered Hudsons in practice, with C&NW notable for being unable even to reach 100mph in AAR testing, and Santa Fe getting little faster even with much more heroic proportions; no one claims comparable top-speed limitation for the S1 if they are even borderline sane. The question was getting that fast, not sustaining it...)" (quote end)
Note there was a lot of surplus K4s during the electrification from 1928 to mid-1930s as well.
Reading Class G2-sa
PRR K5 4-6-2 # 5699 with Caprotti Valve Gear
NYC Class J-1e #5336
M636C The SNCF was criticised for building the 241P instead of Chapelon's for the PLM main line which was planned for electrification anyway. Electrification took place as far as Lyon by 1951, the magazines greeting electrification with "Paris-Lyon, les trains plus vite du monde" (the fastest trains in the world) which was true at the time. It was again when the TGV was introduced on a new line years later. But the 241P was a development of the PLM 241C which meant that the crews unserstood the locomotives and all the controls were in the familiar places. Peter
The SNCF was criticised for building the 241P instead of Chapelon's for the PLM main line which was planned for electrification anyway. Electrification took place as far as Lyon by 1951, the magazines greeting electrification with "Paris-Lyon, les trains plus vite du monde" (the fastest trains in the world) which was true at the time. It was again when the TGV was introduced on a new line years later.
But the 241P was a development of the PLM 241C which meant that the crews unserstood the locomotives and all the controls were in the familiar places.
Last night I pullled out my copy of "French Steam", an English (Ian Allen) book covering the period from 1946 to the end of steam in France around 1969, to check up on some aspects of the 230K, mentioned in another thead.
It has captons in French and English, but the French captions are usually more detailed.
There was a photo of 242A1 at its depot, indicating that it ran in a roster with a group of 141P four cylinder mikados. The french caption, but not the English caption, indicated that 242A1 was withdrawn and scrapped before its running mates because it cost too much to maintain. That a three cylinder compound stood out among four cylinder compounds as too expensive to maintain is a statement in itself. Many such locomotives were superseded in the 1950s by the two cylinder 141R, which was recognised as cheap to maintain, if less economical on fuel and which could be run without releying on regular crews who undestood a particular locomotive's foibles, thus providing much greater availability.
The SNCF was criticised for building the 241P instead of Chapelon's 242A1 for the PLM main line which was planned for electrification anyway. Electrification took place as far as Lyon by 1951, the magazines greeting electrification with "Paris-Lyon, les trains plus vite du monde" (the fastest trains in the world) which was true at the time. It was again when the TGV was introduced on a new line years later.
OvermodAh, no. You can figure this out with a little applied thought, remembering that the test plant doesn't simulate cross-level defects or low joints/frogs, and changes in both speed and wheelrim load are relatively slow and usually monotone increase or decrease at a give point in the testing.
Overmod Don't run these two EMD designs together. It was specifically proven in 1947 that a good 4-8-4 in the right service was the equal of the somewhat squirrelly, overexpensive E7. There's much more in the E8/9 than a few more working horsepower. Comparable is true of F and GP units after the Forties.
Overmod You'd likely have had far more failures than NYO&W by the Sixties, and probably much worse ones, had steam been the only effective road power. Whether that would have served as a wake-up call to an earlier Congress or Cabinet, or whether it would lead to better mergers, is something only alternative historians should tinker with.
Ok and around we go again.
If the test bed was incapable of simulating real conditions then why bother with it. If the technology was not advanced enough to do this then a mathematical correction could be easily applied. Surely all those scientists and engineers, Pennsy and Baldwin, knew this. So not buying it fully. Besides they had the S1 and Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon as a functioning out on the road in real conditions in all weather, in wartime conditions to boot! as the test bed. So not buying it even more now.
Up here in the Great White North steam was in abundance right up until 1959, even beyond, but less so, until spring 1960. Recall the account of a Forum member from Buffalo who visited a roundhouse in Niagara Falls that was full packed with active steam one weekend and the following weekend nothing.. all gone. That is how it happened here. Both the CPR and CNR got together and decided on a final day. Just like that. Both John St and Spadina roundhouses were full of steam in Toronto in pictures from 1959, then poof gone. Brand new overhauled, paint still wet locomotives sat in dead lines at Stratford and Angus and Winnipeg. So perhaps 5-10 years lag with the US, but neither CNR or CPR showed any adverse economic effects. I cannot believe that steam into the 60's would have seen massive NY,O&W copycats. There were specific irreversible reasons for the demise of that road. You could cost cut that road down to a dog pulling kids carts and still lose money. Besides we already have the Penn Central bankruptcy with now second generation Diesels that did nothing to save their sorry state. To think steam would have made it worse is too bizarre to forward. Maybe the merger would not have happened at all if steam was advanced.
As to non EMC builders and Jones' claim, well the government directly influenced that outcome by disallowing anyone but Electro Motive from building the real stuff. They all had to play catch up and cut corners and rush and, worse still, they knew it. Fingers crossed and all that. Too bad, the table was already set. Again up here in Can-a-der the government mandated fairness between Alco/MLW, EMC/GMD and to a lesser extent CLC/FM but even they still got a good whack at it. The CPR liked them enough. GM was in a minority position up here.
I agree 100% about conjecture as to steam in the future and how things unfold and the consequences of prevalent steam. Better mergers, more end to end? Longer hauls, more competing big systems. Railroad power exempt from environmental laws? Perhaps eventually but quickly Federal 'forgive it' loans for massive electrification projects. That would make up for the St. Lawrence Seaway, Interstate Highways, Roads and bridges, Airports and so on. Fully justified in levelling the field. It would look like peanuts today. However all that is historical speculation.
Beware the Scientocracy.
Jones1945 Miningman I still have my Trains magazines where it was reported that every record in the book was smashed by the T1's on the test beds in Altoona. The look of the future was put forth in steam and it looked like the future. 6 months it lasted. I really appreciate and absolutely agree with your points about the T1s, Vince. Regarding T1s prototypes’ “glowing” test report, it was either the Pennsy lied to the shareholders and even to themselves by a rigged report ...
Miningman I still have my Trains magazines where it was reported that every record in the book was smashed by the T1's on the test beds in Altoona. The look of the future was put forth in steam and it looked like the future. 6 months it lasted.
I still have my Trains magazines where it was reported that every record in the book was smashed by the T1's on the test beds in Altoona. The look of the future was put forth in steam and it looked like the future. 6 months it lasted.
On the other hand, EMD kept improving their diesel electric products since mid-1930s thus T1s, a late-1930s design couldn’t catch up with engine like E7, E8 in terms of lower operating expenses and other economics advantages.
... early mainline diesel products from BLW, ALCO and FM were something worse than a scam, the trouble they created made the situation more complicated for RRs who purchased them.
What our forum members pointed out was right that even though Class I RRs in the States kept using the steam engine until late-1960, they probably wouldn’t survive after 1971 due to the environmental law.
Miningman I still have my Trains magazines where it was reported that every record in the book was smashed by the T1's on the test beds in Altoona. The look of the future was put forth in steam and it looked like the future. 6 months it lasted. Suddenly just like that it's all no good and junk. Something really smelled here. Something was stifled. Of course Diesels in all likelihood would have been the order of the day but much later, decades perhaps.
I still have my Trains magazines where it was reported that every record in the book was smashed by the T1's on the test beds in Altoona. The look of the future was put forth in steam and it looked like the future. 6 months it lasted. Suddenly just like that it's all no good and junk. Something really smelled here. Something was stifled.
Of course Diesels in all likelihood would have been the order of the day but much later, decades perhaps.
Dave K. -- I invoke Ayn Rand only for that post war era when there were huge investments in not only Duplex Drives, based on what had previously been built, and coal Turbines but also Alleghenies, exceptional switchers, some remote controlled, outstanding 4-8-4's, some rebuilt steam such as C&NW Zeppelins, CPR Selkirks and simple but advanced and highly efficient branch line Pacific's and on and on.
One of the illustrative pieces of history is: what became of the engineers who so carefully worked out that New York to Philadelphia high-speed interurban? I thought, when I read it, imagine what would happen when the 'boom' in eastern Pennsylvania/New Jersey with cheap Portland cement concrete got going. What would those engineers have done with gleepsite?
And the answer is: as 'visionary' they saw very well what the use of concrete would be: they got into the good roads movement, and the engineer became one of the original authorities in paving equipment. As far as I know he never considered another railroad project...
Almost the only thing that could have replaced a government-assisted good-roads program would have been government ownership (not just regulation or subsidy) of a strategic network of 'electric railways' serving regionally. But (judging by the efforts made by steam railroads to electrify over part of their routes, most of which were pretty much done by WW1) that would need to have been done prior to the Wilsonian excuse for federal control ... and it would have been tough to apportion revenue with the then-budding power-company magnates like Insull. Whether we'd have had the excuse to use federal money for something like TVA, who knows?
People tend to forget this, but by 1928 it was very clear that the United States would be running out of gasoline-producing reserves very soon. So clear that one of the Standard Oil spinoffs spent an ungodly amount of money licensing the Fischer-Tropsch process to synthesize gasoline from coal. This would raise the cost of gasoline ... but you didn't see the rate of development in the automobile industry damped by this in the late '20s, right up to the point that the Depression arrested it for other reasons.
The other thing was the rise of 'reliable' used cars very, very cheap -- in part, a consequence of all those Model Ts produced better and cheaper each year. An interurban depends upon a large enough volume of people who don't care much when they get to someplace a few miles away, all going at the same time, without needing to transport very much. A streetcar depends upon people willing to take a long time, stopping and starting, to get someplace without walking. In both cases, when you have a cheap set of wheels not only do you have a convenient alternative to transportation but you can take others along, probably for more than a streetcar fare as you can dogleg off the car route to accommodate passengers or get over to the curb. Success of the proto-Uber jitney movement, in the teeth of City Hall taxi preservationism, is some indication of the power involved. But one of the things that kept jitneys a fad was the evolving ease with which everyone could have their own...
Well that was gentle Overmod. I full well expected a good thrashing and holes blown in my little rubber dinghy out in the ocean like that, so thanks.
Makes everyone think a bit though.
MiningmanCould it explain brand new T1's sabotage, S2 failed with no actual attempts of improvements, S1 scrapped, assured failure of coal turbines afterward... and so much more?
The BCR coal-turbine project WAS the product of that scientocracy, and became the scam that it was when the "scientists" did the analogue of grant swing and kept mooching on the member railroads for work that locomotive builders or other 'interested parties' should have taken up on their dime.
If Union Pacific couldn't get it to work, on the shoestring of shoestrings that was the locomotive 80 and then 8080 project, I suspect no one could have gotten it to work. And by the end of that effort you had no 'locomotive' builder even remotely interested in direct coal combustion who would undertake building it in quantity. A good thing, as there is NO way it could be adapted to even 1970s pollution standards within contemporary gage limitations and working conditions.
And then we can take up how miserable a thing it would be to run.
The problem with so much of 'advanced steam technology' was that it had all the materials and fabrication expense of more sophisticated approaches, but none of the practical thermal efficiency and not enough maintenance 'saving'. Lubritoria were a wonderful idea, but the gains were relative to total-loss lubrication in the first place; many water-treatment regimens were dependent on ghastly continuous blowdown, and so on: it's romantic to see one steam locomotive operating, quite another thing to have a fleet of maintained-to-a-price examples going by every day (or not going by, broken down expensively somewhere).
In my opinion the road that used modern steam best was the Nickel Plate, which to this day operates fast bridge trains at speeds right at the horsepower peak of their best locomotives. I believe the Brown paper used data from just before the time Nickel Plate dieselized; if you look at why that road gave up Berks when it did (and for what) you will have a good understanding of why the transition became inevitable by that point, for that era.
A case could be made that interurbans failed because their proponents (usually utility combines looking to capitalize on uses and excuses for wiring out their regions - something increasingly unnecessary and non-lucrative after the War) were less popular than the far more convenient and useful automotive cartel. Part of the success is documented in 'The Insolent Chariots' -- how could increasingly rattletrap trolleys compete with that juggernaut? If Los Angeles, of all places, could get rid of its system, why invoke conspiracy when the sheep did the job themselves?
Consider, again, that the Niagara was only competitive with diesel power in a very specific service; when that ceased to exist either for marketing or economic reasons, let alone a combination of both, all the collateral expense of that particular 'weapons system' increasing dramatically after 1947, you should not be surprised at unwillingness to continue.
Now, it is possible that had there been "modern" small power, perhaps the sort of thing Steins was developing in the early Thirties, with some of the advantages of modern maintenance and servicing on an appropriate scale, you might have seen more use of steam until it had been 'costed down'. But this is precisely the sort of place that dieselization became established where continued operation of small-scale railroading made sense. Steam disappeared coincidentally with All Those Canadian Railroads that are gone when you look around, not in isolation. It may be hard to distinguish which of them was doomed the more.
They survived where it made economic and fiscally responsible sense. When it didn't, steamers were cashiered. There are older diesels still being used, far less efficient than those designed to replace them. Same diff.
Perhaps it has a 1% chance of being a viable explanation but maybe that was the 1 time. It fits in its own way.
I full well expect harsh blowback and many groans. Yet as pointed out steam survived even in Western countries around the world for decades yet.
Please. I know the clout of the oil firms that shaped foreign policy, a walkl away from USA energy independence, and eventully led to the World Trade Center - Pentagon disaster, El Quada, etc. But dieslilzation of railroads?
Note that every major railroad system in the world has dieslized or electrified or a combination of both, with the choice based on economics. No major railroad system, world-wide, relies on steam power today.
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