Euclid "There sure was never a dull moment when Michael Sole started a thread." It’s too bad we don’t have a search function on the forum, so we could review Michael’s analysis of why dieselization was a mistake.
To Part 1 of Euclid's statement: A hearty shoiut from the 'AMEN CORNER!" When joined in battle wirh 'Futuremodal' there were some pretty good points to be made; until the conversation got down into the mud with ad hominem attacks. At which point the Moderators called the pitched battle to a halt, and sent the combatantants packing--til the next time...
To Euclid's Part Two.... The Forum techies gained some 'Memory', and the reference material was deep-sixed into the Historical Dust Bin...
dakotafred Fascinating discussion for one, me, who is an old goat but still too young to remember much about steam. It makes me remember, without special fondness, the days on here of Michael Sol, who "proved" in his lawyerly way the economic superiority of steam over diesel. (In the same manner he proved the Milwaukee Road was kicking the butts of the Hill Lines out West and was done in only by a conspiracy of its directors.)
Fascinating discussion for one, me, who is an old goat but still too young to remember much about steam. It makes me remember, without special fondness, the days on here of Michael Sol, who "proved" in his lawyerly way the economic superiority of steam over diesel. (In the same manner he proved the Milwaukee Road was kicking the butts of the Hill Lines out West and was done in only by a conspiracy of its directors.)
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
kgbw49 This gentleman does a nice job showing some "might-have-beens", paricularly on New York Central but also on quite a few other roads. http://www.railarchive.net/fantasysteam/
This gentleman does a nice job showing some "might-have-beens", paricularly on New York Central but also on quite a few other roads.
http://www.railarchive.net/fantasysteam/
With all due respects to the creator of that web page, some of those locomotives, especially the PRR Garratt from a T-1 and the Erie Quadruplex, are engineering impracticalities.
dakotafredt makes me remember, without special fondness, the days on here of Michael Sol, who "proved" in his lawyerly way the economic superiority of steam over diesel. (In the same manner he proved the Milwaukee Road was kicking the butts of the Hill Lines out West and was done in only by a conspiracy of its directors.)
I "missed out" on M. Sol. Given how dull the forum has become in the past year, with a few exceptions, maybe he chould be resurrected?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Picking up on your ideas, I wonder if any reader has information on how much labor was saved by the kind of run-through servicing at Roanoke that N&W instituted, markedly different than servicing steam on other railroads.
If this thread is strictly about GM not taking up diesel-locomotive design starting in 1930, and not a prospective parallel about GM building up markets for their trucks via the same methods they did for buses, then some other factors apply.
In particular, there were a number of railroads that ran happily and profitably with steam, the Nickel Plate and N&W being two reasonably good examples. There is also Brown's paper (from 1961, comparatively 'late in the game' and well after the period of increased labor costs and loss of much of the inherent 'discipline' that provided low-wage labor for unskilled and unpleasant work, which found much of the logic behind contemporary dieselization relatively uncompelling.
I think a case can be made for a fairly widespread continuation of both development and use of steam locomotives if the sources for proprietary components and services, particularly patent auxiliaries for which there could be no effective 'railroad-built' substitutes, had not been eliminated so quickly.
I do not think any of the prospective forms of 'new steam' would actually have succeeded, particularly steam turbine-electrics, but I do think that, for tax reasons, there would have been a greatly enhanced rebuilding of older and smaller locomotives (for example, along the lines of Frisco 1351/2) and this would have gone hand in hand with greater adoption of 'best practices' for steam servicing and maintenance and perhaps with better fuel and water quality.
On the other hand, I think there is very little chance that reciprocating steam would long survive passage of the Clean Air Act (which I think it is fair to say would have come about in some form about when it did, in the late '60s or early '70s.) I suspect that by that time, locomotive manufacturers would have been up to 'second-generation' horsepower levels per unit even without competitive pressure from EMD, so the 'second wave' of dieselization (that wiped out the remaining bastions of steam at the end of the '50s) would likely have occurred only about a decade delayed.
Now, the greater question is how many railroads dieselizing with 'non-EMD' power would have survived the lean years up to deregulation -- I'd argue there would be more problems, and more failures and forced mergers, but I couldn't even begin to say what they would have been specifically. It would be interesting to me to see what the effect of railroads' attempts to maintain investment in steam would have been on the legislation and subsequent enforcement of what became the EPA -- here again, we pass more into speculative fiction than anything deterministic.
The one thing that might be substantially different today would be an increased possibility that the use of steam in niches for which it is best suited might survive, for example in heavy bridge traffic or even long container consists (like the one 3985 famously handled). This use would be concentrated in particular lanes, with a minimization both of required servicing facilities and specialized people. It is possible both that examples of these services would be dieselized and that, when that happened, the displaced equipment might be put to work on other services (either as helpers or in actual 'reverse dieselization' where tax consequences optimized recapitalization or acquisition of the equipment profitably).
i think all the previous posts are worthwhile, but I do believe the Harrisburg - Pittsburgh electrification would have occured, and some of the ex-interurban rementants that have survived to this day, like Southern Indiana, would have kept trolley power a lot longer, maybe even to this day like Iowa Traction, formerly Mason City and Clear Lake has done. If that short-line railroading had survived at all.
True, the economics and "go everywhere" aspect of diesel electric power would have eventually triumphed no matter what by 1970 or so, as one of our contributors mentioned happened in Europe. But in a "what if" thread it is fun to to surmise "what if". Personally I would have liked to see if Alco would have come up with a higher-drivered Challenger for UP similar to what GN was kicking around, maybe a Sante Fe "6000" 4-10-4, a Pennsy second generation "T2" that solved the front engine slipping issue or a Southern Green 84-inch-drivered 4-6-4 with poppet valves on tne Atlanta-Washington main. I think David P. Morgan would approve.
The labor force needed to maintain steam fleets was fading in numbers and too expensive.
It would have been something to see steam developed even for another 10 years, to 1955 or so. There were some interesting locomotives on the drawing boards that never made it to production. Four that come to mind are the N-W Y7 fast freight 2-8-8-2, the Great Northern fast freight 2-6-6-4 with 73 inch drivers, the UP "Super 800s", and perhaps on C&O and SP some Lima-designed 4-8-6 passenger locomotives. (Could you imagine a Daylight 4-8-6?) I am sure there are others out there. With another 10-15 years of steam development and good old American ingenuity, there would have been some magnificent machines coming out of Schenectady, Eddystone, Lima, Roanoke, Altoona, and Hillyard Shops in Spokane.
It would have been something to see steam developed even for another 10 years, to 1955 or so. There were some interesting locomotives on the drawing boards that never made it to production. Four that come to mind are the N-W Y7 fast freight 2-8-8-2, the Great Northern fast freight 2-6-6-4 with 73 inch drivers, the UP "Super 800s", and perhaps on C&O and SP some Lima-designed 4-8-6 passenger locomotives. (Could you imagine a Daylight 4-8-6?) I am sure there are others out there. With another 10-15 years of steam development and good old American ingenuity, there would have been some magnificent machines coming oit out of Schenectady, Eddystone, Lima, Roanoke, Altoona, and Hillyard Shops in Spokane.
Assuming GM hadn't purchased Winton or EMC and those two organisations survived the depression following the 1929 crash, diesel electrics would have continued in the passenger field, perhaps more slowly and remained longer on the secondary services. Surely diesel switchers would have continued to develop from those produced for the clean air acts, and probably road switchers would have emerged by the 1950s.
The resulting units would have been more costly and complex than those that appeared as a result of GM's and EMD's extensive R&D, but they would have superseded steam by the late 1960s, just as they did in the UK where diesel locomotive development proceeded independently of USA developments.
M636C
Dave: It's unfortunate that the term "conspiracy theory" has come to mean a false explanation for some event, usually spread by paranoid types. Of course it correctly refers to a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators, which is generally illegal or harmful.
So far I am enjoying the discussion. Thanks to every one who has added to it.
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
I and my family were regular weekend uses of the 8 6th crosstown until conversion to bus in August 1936, and even at age 4 I was a curious railfan, and wanted answers. Sometime afterward, the E. 90th Street - Astoria ferry ceased because of the Triboro Bridge, and we stopped using the bus and went to Queens by subway. Then after the Athena tragedy, with the relocation of the reamining half of the visited family to Sutton Place, steetcar use returned with the 59th Street Crosstown. with their new 626-645 Third Avenue home-built cars.
I recommend the following two books: From Steam to Diesel by Churella (Princeton University Press 1998) and Out of Steam Dieselization and American Railroads, 1920-1960 by Schramm (Lehigh University Press 2010).
Wizlish Now we might take up the second half of the question -- even if the railroads had started first-generation dieselization in the '40s and early '50s, could GM's "variant" of NCL have gained traction,
Now we might take up the second half of the question -- even if the railroads had started first-generation dieselization in the '40s and early '50s, could GM's "variant" of NCL have gained traction,
daveklepper One thing I should have made clear: GM's takeover of the transit industry, beginning with purchase of New York Railways (Green Lines) in 1926, was not a conspiracy, and the consent decree and fine were from excluding other bus manufacturers, not the destruction of electric railway plant.
One thing I should have made clear: GM's takeover of the transit industry, beginning with purchase of New York Railways (Green Lines) in 1926, was not a conspiracy, and the consent decree and fine were from excluding other bus manufacturers, not the destruction of electric railway plant.
WHAT? GM purchased New York Railways in '26?????
Are you referring to the purchase by the Omnibus Corporation (let's throw that name into the conspiracy mix) which was owned by John Hertz (of rental car fame) and had no connection to GM at the time. However he did have a bus building business called of all things "Yellow Coach" (still the corporate colors of Hertz, see how I snuck that in?),
GM recognized their superior designs and purchased (bought out?) Yellow in the mid '30s, and moved production from Chicago to Pontiac. After the war (they built tanks during the war) the name was changed to GMC Truck and Coach.
I always thought it interesting that both the Omnibus Corporation, and NCL were both based in Chicago, and both accused as shills for GM but very little evidence of staff crossover between the two!
PS There is no evidence that I am aware of that GM had any interest in Omnibus even though it was an almost 100% GM property.
They built what a lot of professionals in the industry thought was a superior product, as a rider I didn't agree but oh well!
daveklepper Suppose GM's policy toward street railroads and interurban lines have been paralleled by a similar policy to favor trucking over freight railroads. (There were tendencies in that direction, but that is a subject for a different posting.) They would probably have not been the leader in streamlined passenger train power and probably would not have barnstormed the FT and done the research that made road freight locomotives possible. And Alco and Baldwin and Lima probably would have been more than content to continue supplying steam locomotives. What would have happened? I have some ideas, but I would like to learn yours before presenting (and possibly modifying) mine.
Suppose GM's policy toward street railroads and interurban lines have been paralleled by a similar policy to favor trucking over freight railroads. (There were tendencies in that direction, but that is a subject for a different posting.) They would probably have not been the leader in streamlined passenger train power and probably would not have barnstormed the FT and done the research that made road freight locomotives possible. And Alco and Baldwin and Lima probably would have been more than content to continue supplying steam locomotives. What would have happened?
I have some ideas, but I would like to learn yours before presenting (and possibly modifying) mine.
Get over that "street railways and interurbans" thing. Been shown again and again as the great urban myth. If you want to know the real reason for the demise of the Interurban read Hilton and Due. Copies are available on Amazon.
If Diesel hadn't invented diesel motors, so there were no diesel locomotives or diesel trucks, steam probably would have done well against gasoline powered road transportation. I don't think steam would have fared so well if you had diesel trucks, but no diesel locos.
I don't know if electrification would have been expanded to a large extent, since the OP's question deals only with private-enterprise railroading. Most European countries, who went electric 100+ years ago, had government controlled lines. Private companies often balked at the high up-front expense of electrification.
I think Schlimm has the answer. I believe bankrupcies in the East would have come sooner, the government and subsidies for passenger service would have come sooner, the western railroads would have electrified their main lines with government help, and a sort of Conrail for most of the eastern railroads would have done the same thing. Total nationalization would still have been avoided, and soon enough another manufacturer, perhaps even Ford or Chrysler, as well as one of the three traditional builders, would have come up with the right package for dieselizing what remained that was not electrifie.
Since this is all a "what if?" we should follow Dave's outline. Therefore, none of the steam loco builders are building diesels. So what do the railroads do, especially those with mostly old, worn out steam after WWII? Continue with placing orders for the various 'revolutionary steamers? Electrify? Whitcomb?
erikem If GM had decided to forgo the locomotive market, they would have forgone on the huge USN market for locomotive sized engines during WW2. This would have meant that the likes of Alco, Baldwin, FM and Lima-Hamilton would have likely been in better position to offer well developed diesel engines post WW2.
If GM had decided to forgo the locomotive market, they would have forgone on the huge USN market for locomotive sized engines during WW2. This would have meant that the likes of Alco, Baldwin, FM and Lima-Hamilton would have likely been in better position to offer well developed diesel engines post WW2.
I am not sure about this. GM would still have had the Cleveland Diesel division,and in order for there to be any 'product' to use in the truck replacements for rail service we can probably assume the two-stroke Detroit series would have been developed for large vehicle service.
FM of course would have had exactly the development path from 'naval' OP engines to locomotives that it did in reality; the Hamilton engine left Lima with little better than switcher-size engine power (and the temptation for Lima to go to Hamilton's free-piston technology that would have bypassed diesels in more modern power); Baldwin's high-speed engine development both pre- and postwar didn't come to much and they specialized in dead-end 635-rpm engines that had little upgrade potential. I had thought that the whole development of practical road locomotive prime movers at Alco came after 1944, and largely hinged on turbocharger evolution during the latter part of the War. (The DL-109s with 539 power were something of a joke and a disaster waiting to happen, and the 241-engined demonstrators weren't much better - Will Davis has somethlng to say on these issues.)
I think there is little that the 567 provided naval vessels that couldn't have been done -- albeit not as well -- with quads or quints. My guess is that firms like Chrysler would have been far more likely than the 'other' locomotive builders in developing a light two-stroke diesel specialized at comparable size to the 567 for naval applications.
If GM had decided to forgo the locomotive market, they would have forgone on the huge USN market for locomotive sized engines during WW2. This would have meant that the likes of Alco, Baldwin, FM and Lima Hamiton would have likely been in better position to offer well developed diesel engines post WW2.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.