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Steam locomotives were much more powerful, on average, than the deisels which replaced them. They were designed to be able to haul their trains single-handed. Of course, this was not always possible, and helper districts were common in order to move a heavy load up a steep hill, but the difficulty of synchronizing the engines kept this to a minimum. <br /> <br />The modularity of deisels was a selling point; if a train needed to be extra long on occasion, one more unit could be added to the standard two or three unit lashup. They have always been designed to be able to handle about half a train on their own; the early F-units were almost always sold as sets of two to four units, and even given a common number with "A", "B", "C" style suffixes. <br /> <br />Personally, I like deisels because of this mix-and-match attitude; I like to come up with odd combinations to head up my trains. Plus, I model Norfolk & Western, which liked to run units long hood forward, yet had most engines delivered with dual control stands to permit running in either direction, which means even more variety.
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