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Sayeth TimZ: "QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer C&O had one EB grade, maximum of 0.57%. N&W had three - Elkhorn (1.4% after 1950, 2.0% before), Alleghany (1.0%) and Blue Ridge (1.2%). N&W had far worse curvature to contend with. N&W was clearly at a disadvantage eastward. Something over half their coal went west, and no obvious disadvantage there." Depends on what period you're discussing. It wasn't always true, and the differences weren't all that much even when the westward movement was greater. QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer N&W had only 100 lousy old compound 2-8-8-2s and 43 anemic 2-6-6-4s (if you listen to the steam locomotive intelligentsia). Which intelligentsia is that? Those who've loudly proclaimed that the compound Y's were too slow and the A's were too light and not powerful enough, for many years. You know who you are. QUOTE: Originally posted by Old TimerCome on. C&O should have mopped up Wall Street with the N&W. Equalling them before the PM acquisition doesn't cut it. So we're agreed they did equal them until 1947? Not at all. They NEVER equalled them. Check it out, TimZ. For Mr. Parks: From about 1941 until they quit making steam locomotives you could hardly pick up a railroad trade journal - or TRAINS, for that matter, without seeing advertising by Alco featuring the 800s, Challengers and Big Boys, or by Lima featuring the 2-6-6-6s; even Baldwin got into the act occasionally, with SP cab forwards, etc. These people were in business, at that time, to make money selling locomotives. N&W didn't do similar advertisements because they weren't in the locomotive building business. Everybody was talking Big Boys and Alleghenys, etc., but N&W had no spokesperson. It needed none. The people that it wanted to be happy were the stockholders, and believe me, those folks were ecstatic. So N&W's power got pretty much ignored. The "intelligentsia" was ooh'ing and aah'ing about the subjects of the ads, and that was where the ballyhoo came in. And it's been forty years after dieselization that somebody has come forth and said "what about the weights? What about the costs?" And some of the locomotives that looked really good all of a sudden didn't look so good any more, unless the analyst didn't care about anything except size and weight and drawbar horsepower, but that's really only half an analysis. Post WWII, the two railroads neck and neck for the records for Gross Ton Miles per Train Hour were the UP and the N&W (not counting the one-commodity "conveyor belts" like DM&IR, B&LE and VGN). The UP did it with speed, of course; the N&W did it with a combination of speed and tonnage. The C&O wasn't close. The point here is that the only way N&W could do it with their homely homemade stuff was if it was really better than the smart guys thought it was. GTM/TH is a measure of transportation efficiency, but the figures would have meant more as far as the power was concerned if the comparative engine weights and costs had been figured in. GTM/TH/$, if you will. Or even if you won't. The GTM/TH figures are available - they've all been published for many years. Check them out. Old Timer
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