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Now that I am finding my way around this site, which is a bit difficult, and have read throughmost of the 400 plus comments in this line, I would like to make the following comments:1. The first eight or nine pages struck me as superficial and simplisitc, for the most part.After  that the quality improved dramatically.2. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics, as Mark Twain said. It is easier to poison a dog, whichswallows everything whole, that a cat, which sniffs, paws, and tastes its food before eating.3. The railroads dieselized on fast, light trains and slow, heavy trains, on which the diesel's advantages were most apparent. Within a decade of dieselization, however, they had to run fast, heavy trains, on which it is a different story. Brown"s study, based on data prior to that, still made a distinction between yard and road service.4. They still have to run fast, heavy trains, but now hampered by fuel costs. It takes twicethe diesel horsepower to haul a train at 70 mph as at 50. (TRAINS, Jan 1974, May 1986) The old steam-diesel debate did not deal with this consideration. 5. Train speed is not only a matter of customer service. There is also equipment and plant utilization.There is also the matter of generating capacity, which, under mobile generation, has to equalfleet horespower. The peak load on Penny's central plant in WWII, however, averaged 16% andnever exceeded 22%.  6. Figure also it is not merely oil shortages in the offing, but, less debateably, capital shortages.Anyone want to argue the current  federal and trade deficits are sustainable? See the April 6, 2008 60 Minutes on foreign security funds holding hundreds of billions in American assets, the sale of which would skyrocket interest rates and collapse the dollar. You do not have to be a right-wing sore tooth to make such an argument, as have such impeccable Establishmentarians as Perter Perterson and Robert Hormats. Figure also capital shortages could hamstring oil production, regardless of what is in the ground, per Maugeri, The Age of Oil. 7. Higher interest rates would put a premium on steam's lower capital cost. Dieselization did occurunder artificially low interest rates. Interest costs would also put a premium on lower transit times,as on the old Great Northern silk trains. 8. We ought to be thinking about a locomotive for hauling 5,000 ton trains at 80 mph. My nomination is an updated Pennsy turbine, call it the Q-3. The problem with the S-2 was low speed performance. A deflection displacement turbine is little more than a hole in the boiler starting out. Something as simple as a reverse gear for the small reverse turbine might have made it a superb locomotive. The turbine also avoided valve and balance problems, also allowing smaller drivers. See Railway Mechanical Engineer, March and April 1945, for not merely reciprocating steam's superiority at speed, but turbine over piston. Also see Pennsy Power for the turbine exhausting at 15lb pressure, indicating great efficiency.
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