Steam Locomotives versus Diesels

[Tulyar15]

From a British perspective there is no doubt that the advent of diesel railcars saved a number of branch lines from closure. The lower costs saved money whilst the greater speed and improved ambience of the diesel cars helped bring back customers in the 1950's. As for buying diesel locos, British Rail bough too many too quickly. A far more sensible approach prevailed in the Irish Republic where they started dieselisation in the late 1940's and did it on a gradual basis, eliminating steam in 1964. They avoided BR's wasteful practice of buying lots of new steams locos then scrapping them after less than 10 years. (Some of the less reliable types of diesels BR bough did not last much longer!). Had BR followed the Irish approach I think its finances would have been a lot better.

[nanaimo73]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer

Can we do something else for a change?

Old Timer

Certainly. Could you start a thread about the Y7 ?

QUOTE: Written by C E Pond, page 41, October 1984 Trains

In the middle 1930's, N&W locomotive designers were requested to make some layouts of a larger locomotive with more tractive effort and higher horsepower to handle heavier trains at higher speeds. The type selected was a 2-8+8-2 single-expansion locomotive with boiler proportions as large as clearances would permit. Some of the specifications of this proposed Y7 class: 26x30-inch cylinders; 63-inch drivers; 130 square-foot grate area; 7100 square feet evaporative heating surface; 2900 square feet superheating surface; 285 pounds boiler pressure; and 153,000 pounds tractive force (142,000 pounds main engine and 11,000 pounds booster). Unfortunately, in July 1937, Federal legislation was introduced to limit freight-train lenght to 70 cars, which sounded the death knell for the new design. The legislation never passed, but before the question was resolved all work on the Y7 project was terminated.

[nanaimo73]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

QUOTE: Originally posted by AC6000CW

there 2 railroads in the united states that are narrow gauage.

Really? Which ones, and where are they?

Thanks

The White Pass and Yukon, in Alaska. And as Chad mentioned, the Plaster City line east of San Diego received some WP&Y diesels. The D&RGW had diesel #50 at Durango, now at the Colorado RR Museum- http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=80306
There was a diesel powered narrow gauge in northern Arkansas (Limedale ?) until a few years ago.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

If Rio Grande and East Broad Top, among others, wished to dieselize their narrow gauge lines, all three of the major diesel builders offered export designs which would have been suitable for narrow gauge use. GE even sold diesels to South Africa for their 2'6" narrow gauge. The DL535E's from Alco on White Pass & Yukon were a variant of one of Alco's best-selling export designs.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer

Well, we've used up eight pages of this thread proving nothing.

Those seeking to impress us with their thermodynamic and/or mechanical expertise have yet to prove that there was a technology in place in the 1950s that would make a steam locomotive more profitable than a diesel, or more specifically, make steam propulsion more profitable.

Those seeking to revise history by utilizing the works of previous would-be revisionist historians to prove that the railroads were overburdened by the cost of financing their diesel purchases have yet to point to any railroad bankruptcy that was directly attributable to the purchases of diesels. Oh, a couple of railroads went bankrupt in the early post-steam era, notably the NYO&W and the PC, but both of those were on the way to bankruptcy anyhow. Their failures can't be blamed on dieselization.

I guess what I'm saying is that this is getting tiresome. Can we do something else for a change?

Old Timer

This thread is about Steam vs Diesel, if it is getting tiresome for you, don't read it. The facts laid out in this thread suggest that the debt accumulation that resulted from massive dieseliztion, during which perfectly good steam locomotives with years of servicability left were scrapped, had a direct correlation with the railroad industry's ROI falling by half, and no other event has as close of a correlation with this reduction in ROI. Such a fact may be tiresome for you (or perhaps troubling to you in that it erodes your established view of rail history), but it is there nonetheless. Most of us find this analysis enlightening.

However, if you have any facts or opinions on the subject that you feel need to be extolled, by all means share them, because that's what this forum is all about.

[rrandb]

As stated in the original post the biggest "advantage of steam vs. diesels" is that diesels are still available for purchase and steam is not. Even China has finally stopped manfacturing steam and no one rode this iron horse farther than they did. [2c]

[Modelcar]

....My opinion...Yes, opinion is this: Use all the pluses and minuses of steam locomotion.....and compare all the pluses and minuses of diesel-electric power and come up with a resulting factor and I'm on the side of a railroad being better off in most categories with using the diesel-electric power.....This is not considering whether the company scrapped useable steam too soon {waisteful}, and purchasing new diesel-electric too many too quick, etc....to hurt the bottom line....I'm forming my opinion of just which kind of power is the better for a railroad co. to be using now...in 2005.

[feltonhill]

nanaimo73 -

The quote by C. E. Pond you referenced from Trains pretty much summarizes what's known about it. There's additional information including a diagram, in Bud Jeffries book, N&W Giant of Steam, second edition available very soon from N&WHS (nwhs.org). There are also about 100 drawings that have survived at NWHS archives. I did a detailed elevation of it but don't known how to post jpg files here.

[nanaimo73]

QUOTE: Originally posted by feltonhill

nanaimo73 -

The quote by C. E. Pond you referenced from Trains pretty much summarizes what's known about it. There's additional information including a diagram, in Bud Jeffries book, N&W Giant of Steam, second edition available very soon from N&WHS (nwhs.org). There are also about 100 drawings that have survived at NWHS archives. I did a detailed elevation of it but don't known how to post jpg files here.

Thanks.
Would the Y7 have been more like a Big Boy than an A was ?

[Murphy Siding]

Old Timer: This thread has somewhar morphed from an arguement about which is better-steam or diesel, intp an interesting (to me at least) discussion about the process of dieselization. To Mid-Timers like me (45), it gives my brain a little workout to ponder some things, like did the railroads dieselize too quickly for their own good? Did those that held out fare any better because of it? Why didn't the holdouts stick to steam? I know steam is gone. I feel that it was inevitable, once the diesel was perfected. I just desire to learn a little more about that time in history. Your input is valuble too. If it's a waste of time to talk about this, a good case could be made that it's a waste of time to talk about trains-but we do.

[nanaimo73]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding


nanaimo73: Was the FT diesel the Dreadnought of the railroads?[:)]

I don't know. I'm not good at that type of question.


Michael-
The theory you have put forward seems to fall completely apart when one looks at the PRR. It was THE railroad in the 1940s and 1950s. Their ROI fell quicker because they did not dieselize. Instead of buying 2 E7s in the fall of 1945 they should have bought at least 100 and not wasted all of that time and effort trying to replace their (worn out ?) steamers with T1s and the other experiments.

Your railroad on the other hand did such a terrible job of deiselization that the theory makes sense. From 1939 to 1959 they bought 524 EMDs (26 models), 153 FMs (8 models), 127 Alcos (8 models), 54 Baldwins (7 models), 7 Whitcombs, 3 GEs and 2 Davenports. About 300 of those were straight switchers and the other 500 could be used on the road.
Could you tell me what your railroad should have done ? Would you agree they should have purchased 200 S2 Alco switchers during 1940 and 1941. I think this could have taken care of switching until 1972 when the Dash 2s came out. From there would you stay with steam until 1949 (FP7s for passenger trains) and 1954 (GP9s for everything else) ? And then in 1972 a mixture of GP38-2, GP40-2 and SD40-2s and the replacement of the S2 switchers with the GP9s ?

[traintownofcowee]

Simple...
Steam looks better.
Diesels are ugly. (Not all)
Steam need a lot of special care.
Diesels don't.
Steam is special.
Diesels aren't.
And what about electrics?
Talk to me when the power goes out while your on one.
(I like steam a lot more than diesels)

C U ALL L8TER!!!
[:)][8D][:D][8)][|)][:P][;)][X-)][%-)][(-D][(-D][swg][{(-_-)}]

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73
The theory you have put forward falls completely apart when one looks at the PRR. It was THE railroad in the 1940s and 1950s. Their ROI fell quicker because they did not dieselize. Instead of buying 2 E7s in the fall of 1945 they should have bought at least 100 and not wasted all of that time and effort trying to replace their (worn out ?) steamers with T1s and the other experiments.

Your railroad on the other hand did such a terrible job of deiselization that your theory makes sense.

Switchers and road diesels show completely different characteristics from the standpoint of ROI.

The nice thing about looking at combined results from all railroads is that individual policy idiosyncracies and financial circumstances average themselves out and the results can be more easily assessed as "true" results.

However, while I have indeed "put forward" the theory, I must make clear it is not my own, but rather that of Gibbs & Hill, perhaps the most distinguished motive power consulting firm of the era, and which knew the PRR quite well, incidentally.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

N&W's Y7 has been pretty well covered by Pond and by Jeffries; as mentioned, the second edition of Jeffries' book should be available within days.

Jeffries also has a side elevation of the Y7 compiled from available shop drawings. It would have fit on N&W's standard 115' turntables. Weights were not figured, but with N&W's usage of the Cooper E-72 axle loading gauge, weight on drivers would have been around 576,000 pounds, with probably another 30,000 on the lead truck and 50,000 on the trailer, for a total of 656,000 pounds. This would not have made it the heaviest of 2-8-8-2s.

C. E. Pond says that the boiler pressure would have been set at 285 pounds, but if actually constructed it would have probably been at N&W's then standard for 2-8-8-2s of 300.

When the engine was being designed, the first class A 2-6-6-4s were just hitting the road, as were the first Y6 compound 2-8-8-2s. The railroad didn't have much experience with the As at the time; it knew what performance to expect from the Y6 because of the success (performance, not maintenance because of the bar frames) of the Y4a (Y5) built in 1930.

The shelving of the Y7 because of the proposed legislation makes a good story, but I think that the N&W found out a couple of things about the class A and the Y6 that helped put the Y7 to sleep. First, the A produced more DBHP at high speed than anything else in the world in 1936. The A also burned coal like nothing else N&W had ever seen in so doing; N&W wasn't troubled by this fact because of the results that came out of the tender drawbar. But they had to realize that a simple 2-8-8-2 with cylinders 2" larger was going to be even more of a coal eater. Would the results at the drawbar be worth it? Evidently they didn't think so.

The compound Y6 would have been much more economical in the mountains than the Y7, and the A, on the flat districts, would handle as much train as the railroad could be comfortable with (getting in and out of yards, and such). In short the Y7 was going to be a "niche" engine. The only districts where high speed was hard on the Y6 were the Bristol Line west of Radford and the Shenandoah Division north of Shenandoah; these were, speedwise, the most demanding districts for the Y6, but they caused less trouble in those areas than might be expected.

Add to these factors, the Y7 was going to use a trailing truck booster to bump its low-speed tractive effort up into the Y6's class. This adds a high-cost, high-maintenance item of jewelry to the engine. It might have been an advantage over the Y6 of 1936 which had to be shifted from simple to compound at about 4-5 MPH, but not over the later Y6 as modified with the improved intercepting valves which could be operated simple up to 10 MPH with additional help from the booster valve above 10 MPH.

So it probably was for the best that the Y7 was never built, but put me on the list of those who would love to have seen it.

Oh, and Futuremodal - you have suggested that post-dieselization the railroads ROI diminished by half, but can't show any concrete correlation between that fact and the costs of dieselization. I asked for names of railroads whose bankruptcies could directly be blamed on dieselization and none are forthcoming.

I suggest to you that the post-dieselization ERA ROI would have been much less than half, if the railroads had found it necessary to operate with steam

Old Timer

[Anonymous]

Old timer, I'm speculating there was a RIO drop of about half shortly after deilization, but that would be offset by the great increase after they layoffs of the 3rd man of steamers and the hundreds of support crews.

As I stated earlier, deisels increased ROI and profits by reducing the Manhours a railroad had to employ compared to steam. No longer did you need those turntables and roundhouses everywhere, nor the countless men who stationed refueling/watering points along the route. Specilized mechanics were replaced by the general mechanics, as most deisels had interchangeable parts and unlike steamers, didn't need to have certain parts fabricated on site.

After 9 pages of this, we still have Sol and company arguing with no direct evidence of anything except that manhours were reduced and profits were increased by deiselization.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by SteamerFan

Old timer, I'm speculating there was a RIO drop of about half shortly after deilization, but that would be offset by the great increase after they layoffs of the 3rd man of steamers and the hundreds of support crews.

As I stated earlier, deisels increased ROI and profits by reducing the Manhours a railroad had to employ compared to steam. No longer did you need those turntables and roundhouses everywhere, nor the countless men who stationed refueling/watering points along the route. Specilized mechanics were replaced by the general mechanics, as most deisels had interchangeable parts and unlike steamers, didn't need to have certain parts fabricated on site.

After 9 pages of this, we still have Sol and company arguing with no direct evidence of anything except that manhours were reduced and profits were increased by deiselization.

The problem is, railroad ROI decreased. That can be shown. Railroad employment related to diesels decreased by less than any other class of railroad employment. While it has been shown that ROI did, in fact, decrease, no one has shown the opposite, that railroad ROI increased because of dieselization. Gibbs & Hill, the premier railroad motive power consulting firm of the era, found that ROI decreased as a direct result of dieselization by finding that it "added to the financial burden of railways."

Some facts, and a learned study. Oddly for the arguments offered on this thread, the facts -- decline in railroad ROI -- are exactly consistent with the study -- "dieselization added a net financial burden to American railways."

What actual "fact" in this long litany of excuses has been offered to refute that? Not one: not a statistic, nor a comparison, nothing factual whatsoever.

Well, one more set of facts were put forward that supports that notion further.
Railroad employment related to maintenance and train service decined in almost direct proportion to the reduction in carloadings. Causation or correlation? What would, no, what could dieselization have had to do with that? It suggests that dieselization had almost no effect on employment., that the huge layoffs in shop forces were attributable more directly to the loss of traffic and business.

It is, on its face, a completely false assertion to state that dieselization had anything to do with an employment productivity gains whatsover, since the identical improvement would have happened with retaining Steam -- even with no actual productivity increases at all!

After 9 pages of blaming the actual documented railroad ROI declines on everything under the sun except dieselization, including prospective changes that hadn't even happened yet, not one single fact or figure shows that it was even probable, let alone plausible, that railroad ROI benefitted from dieselization.

The facts are weak for dieselization's case regarding its alleged positive financial impact. What 9 pages have shown, however, is that belief structures are strong.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

I wonder:

Say the year is 1947. What is the cost of 1 diesel hp and 1 steam hp? (i expect it to be 4:1 for steam).

I read somewhere that diesels replaced steam 2:1 hp wise. Is this true?

[txhighballer]

As an operating railroader,having run steam and diesel on tonnage trains,I can tell you this: If I want to run fast across the flats with a good size train (8,000 tons or lighter),steam would be my choice. If I want to drag that same train across the mountains then a brace of diesels ( any of the SD family) would be my preference.Why
so,you ask? Let's take a look at a "modern" locomotive,the NKP 765. The locomotive would be in her horsepower range,and tractive effort does not play into the equation because the trick is once she starts it she's gonna run with it until she has to stop for water and/or coal. She brings her train the the base of the mountain,where perhaps four SD40 types would be needed to bring the train over the mountain. Four locomotives controlled by one man in the cab. The cumulative tractive effort of four SD40's is roughly 280,000 pounds,just over two Big Boys in tractive effort. I have deliberatly left out grade percentage,but let's just say it's one percent over several miles........more than a "momentum" grade. Those EMD's will drag the world off it's axis...the 765 would need several of her sisters to perform the same feat..with the resulting crew costs.
Perhaps in such a steam/diesel argument it's easy to get emotional..but the hard numbers don't lie. Diesels DID cost more per horsepower,and should have been phased in as the Norfolk and Western did. The numbers for maintence on the GN directly correlates to the end of steam..in 1958!
Why was this? Well one of the reasons may have been to pay for those shiny new diesels.
This may also be the case for several railroads. Some decisions,once made are made with a "herd" mentality. These decisions at many times were not made with the best information available.......EMD made diesel owenership very easy,and offered some benefits which ended the battle.....but IMHO,the battle was aided by the aforementioned mentality,plus good salesmanship from EMD,and not necessarily the best railroad leadership.
If you look at how some railroads scrapped steam when the power was still less than ten years old,and well able to economically perform its duties,it does make you wonder .
Steam,in all it's glory,should not have been retired until the 70's in some areas. At that point,steam would have paid for itself and would have been fully amortised.I apologize for such a long post,but I think my points are valid. I'll explain more later.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol
Maintenance $ available per mainline mile of track
MILW------- Great Northern
1950 9,580--7,963
1951 11,050-- 9,048
1952 12,411-- 9,763
1953 13,031-- 10,351
1954 11,614-- 10,092
1955 13,509--10,448
1956 13,007--10,936
1957 12,175--11,092
1958 11,408--8,228
1959 11,069-- 8,560
1960 9,770--8,364
1961 8,600--7,633
1962 9,019--7,973
1963 8,455--7,889
1964 8,641--8,249
1965 9,135--7,543
1966 10,922--7,928
1967 9,575-- 8,300
1968 11,656-- 8,266
1969 13,451

You can see that even as ROI continued to decline into the 1960s, it would have been worse had maintenance expenditures continued at the rate they were at during the 1950s.

Well, the Milwaukee's rate of return was NOT following the national average.
In 1946 it was 2%. In 1960, it was 2%. Over the period of dieselization, it did NOT change.

So there was no correlation between dieselization and falling return on property investment for the Milwaukee Road.

Mr. Sol, your theory is too problematic for me. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Mr. Sol.

[Anonymous]

Sayeth MichaelSol:

"It is, on its face, a completely false assertion to state that dieselization had anything to do with an employment productivity gains whatsover, since the identical improvement would have happened with retaining Steam -- even with no actual productivity increases at all!"

This is an interesting assertion. Please prove it by some other means than trying to discredit those who disagree with you.

Old Timer

[klahm]

After reading this entire thread, it seems that different folk interpret what's written based as much on their first impressions, rather than a more thorough, repeated reading of it. There are two separate topics here - contemporary mechanical systems comparison and postwar dieselization economics. They shouldn't be confused with each other.

What I take away from Michael's extensive comments is that dieselization, as implemented by American railroads, extracted a high price in terms of short- and mid-term total financial performance, despite the operational savings that most of us have heard or presumed to be the case, because of the capital cost and unexpectedly short product lifetime of the first-generation (and, some might argue, second-generation) diesel-electric locomotives. (Despite all those GP7s and NW2s soldiering on, the DL109s and most Baldwins didn't last very long.) A more gradual and intelligent approach to the transition would have resulted in better bottom-line performance. Perhaps. The Canadian lines took a longer approach to dieselization, so I wonder how their financials compare.

I don't see evidence that, in today's world, steam would necessarily be a superior technology. Yet it seems that some commenters impute that argument to Michael's posts. A theoretical potential for steam propulsion efficiency is advanced, with reference to the electric power generating industry, but no evidence of successful transfer to even a prototype railroad locomotive is cited. A comparison not raised is to marine propulsion. Steam was replaced by diesel in marine service, over a longer period of time. Marine service doesn't involve the complications of fuel and water replenishment inherent in railroad service, yet steam is not used as the motive power in modern ships.

An interesting comparative situation was the final passenger steam efforts of the NYC and PRR. The former's Niagaras were most certainly state-of-the-art machines, capable of running from Poughkeepsie to Chicago with only one coaling stop, thanks to NYC's track pans for water replenishment. My recollection of what I read some time ago was that they were competitive with E7s in cost terms. The PRR's contemporary loco was the T1 Duplex. A racehorse on the flatlands, it had a horrific reliability record, as documented in a Trains article several years back. The E7s put it to shame. The diesel advantage, in the latter case, arose primarily from failings of the steamer. Of course, the comparison in both cases is high-speed passenger service, where steam propulsion approaches its theoretical horsepower limit and best efficiency. Slow drags are another story altogether, as noted by several posters.

Regardless of individual loco performance, at the end of the day, what matters is shareholder (or, these days, analyst) opinion. If the investor community perceives a particular technology as being "profitable" or "hot", it is difficult for a company to not adopt it. Then, investors moved their money elsewhere if they perceived an upcoming loss of dividends resulting from technological lethargy. Now, analysts move other people's money when they forecast a lack of price growth arising from a perception of technological obsolescence, even when a "hot" technology has been proven not to reduce costs significantly and a company has shown steady earnings growth without it. The executive who doesn't meet analysts' (however mistaken) expectations won't last long and prosper. So (sometimes dumb) decisions get made and implemented despite the demonstrable facts.

My slide rule is a Dietzgen, but I barely survived college thermodynamics, so I'll leave the steam-table exercises to those who know what they're doing.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer

Sayeth MichaelSol:

"It is, on its face, a completely false assertion to state that dieselization had anything to do with an employment productivity gains whatsover, since the identical improvement would have happened with retaining Steam -- even with no actual productivity increases at all!"

This is an interesting assertion. Please prove it by some other means than trying to discredit those who disagree with you.

Old Timer

The comment to that effect was posted on December 21.

QUOTE: posted by Michael Sol:
The smallest decrease in railroad employment, 1947-1972, of all classes of railroad employment, was the engine crews. That is, engine crews were the single least improved of all classes of railroad employment categories. Indeed, crews decreased by a percentage fairly closely resembling the drop in carloadings over the same period. Engine crew employment decreased by 48%, carloadings handled decreased by 43%. It is arguable that it might have been no different, under steam, with the lower carloadings with consolidation of trains.

The crew number decrease compares highly unfavorably to the between 84% and 95% improvement in virtually all other categories of railroad employment over the same time period.

At the margin, the "improvement" in crew employment as a result of dieselization was remarkably small, tiny, considering the similar decrease in traffic, and this slight decrease was substantially lower than the productivity improvements in all other areas of railroad employment.

The post does not disclose whom you think was being discredited by the remark.

You had announced to the List at that time that you already knew all about this stuff and that the thread should end, so I am sure you did not read the above.

Employment levels related to engine maintenance and crew costs correlated almost exactly with carloading levels. Carloadings over the time period looked at dropped almost half, so did maintenance people and crews.

Would the same thing have happened if Steam had stayed King? That is, would railroads have staffed their maintenance forces and crews according to the number and size of trains they needed to run due to business, or would there have been a reason to staff them differently?

If there is a reasonable argument, it is to suggest that an approximation of half the carloadings would have required half the service work for locomotives and for trains because of the substantially reduced service requirements.

That begs the next question: what did dieselization have to do with that process?

Or the next question: if dieselization indeed contributed more employment efficiency at the levels claimed, why weren't the employment levels reduced much faster? Why, indeed, were maintenance and crew requirements reduced so much more slowly than the rest of railroad employment?

There is a substantial discrepancy between what has been claimed for the economic benefits of dieselization, and the actual results, at least from the employment standpoint, which has always been the major claim.

Why were employment levels so apparently closely related to carloadings? Just a coincidence? That seems counterintuitive. If they were correlated to carloadings as the causation, then dieselization contributed nothing on this count at all.

Given the data, what someone needs to do is to demonstrate that a drop in carloadings would not affect maintenance and crew levels. Only in that fashion can dieselization obtain credit.

Plausible?

Best regards, Michael Sol

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cementmixr
Well, the Milwaukee's rate of return was NOT following the national average.
In 1946 it was 2%. In 1960, it was 2%. Over the period of dieselization, it did NOT change.

So there was no correlation between dieselization and falling return on property investment for the Milwaukee Road.

Mr. Sol, your theory is too problematic for me. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Mr. Sol.

Well, Milwaukee of course had an electrification that had been substantially upgraded during this time, a system that demonstrably was better than either diesel or steam, and that surely affected its bottom line in a way that full dieselization would not have.

However, my comment yesterday is as appropriate a full day later as it was then: It has, so far, stood the test of time:

QUOTE: Originally posted by Michael Sol
The nice thing about looking at combined results from all railroads is that individual policy idiosyncracies and financial circumstances average themselves out and the results can be more easily assessed as "true" results.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[nanaimo73]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

Well, Milwaukee of course had an electrification that had been substantially upgraded during this time, a system that demonstrably was better than either diesel or steam, and that surely affected its bottom line in a way that full dieselization would not have.

But wasn't the Electrication carrying only a small part of the CMSP&P's traffic ?
Less than 5% ?

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

Well, Milwaukee of course had an electrification that had been substantially upgraded during this time, a system that demonstrably was better than either diesel or steam, and that surely affected its bottom line in a way that full dieselization would not have.

But wasn't the Electrication carrying only a small part of the CMSP&P's traffic ?
Less than 5% ?

The PCE, at any given point in time, carried between 18% and 25% of the Milwaukee's carloadings, earned between 24% and 39% of the Company's gross revenues and between 40 and 100% of the Company's net revenues. As a "for instance," Milwaukee's overall carloadings circa 1972 were approximately 980,000 or so (from memory); PCE carried about 220,000 of those. The mainline west of Miles City was 1076 miles, of which 438 miles were electrified on the RMD and 208 miles on the Coast Division, 646 miles total. This was 60% of the mainline miles but, having intentionally been placed at the points of maximum use of motive power and fuel, represented probably 80% of total energy consumption for the western mainline.

Was that enough to "affect the bottom line?" Every single study ever done says that it did.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[nanaimo73]

Old Timer or feltonhill-
Did the N&W look at rotary cam poppet valves, or were these not suitable for the lower speeds on their coal trains ?

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cementmixr

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol
Well, Milwaukee of course had an electrification that had been substantially upgraded during this time, a system that demonstrably was better than either diesel or steam, and that surely assisted its bottom line in a way that full dieselization would not have.

"Surely assisted"? Surprising phrase from you, Mr. Sol -- a self-styled numbers man who criticized someone else here for using the phrase, "it's safe to say."

The electrification was only one part of an enormous system. One small fraction of a much larger system, which, in fact, was NOT heavily used in those years (what, a few freights and one pax train per day?).

Did the electrification save the Milwaukee from the alleged dieselization financing fiasco that Mr Sol claims struck other railroads, and that caused their rates of return on investment to drop? Well it's theory compounding theory, and more part of a brain-storming exercise to me than anything resembling serious academic discussion.

Well, I happen to have the exact numbers, but do you think that is necessarily relevant to this thread? I didn't and therefore left it at that.

However, when all those SD-40-2s began to arrive to replace the Electrification, things did indeed go downhill from there, as you may have noticed.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Flint Hills Tex]

I am personally a diesel fan, though I know and get along with a whole slew of steam fans. While the above discussion has been led by a number of very knowledgable folks with lots of statistics, it has, nevertheless, been very emotional. All I can say, is that with the exception of some 3rd World countries, diesel and electric has replaced steam everywhere! Now that is a FACT! As to which traction form is better, more romantic, more beautiful, more economic, etc., etc., I think that we might just as well try and discuss which kind of peanut butter is better: creamy or crunchy?

P.S.: It's Creamy!

[feltonhill]

nanaimo73,

This past month, several notebooks containing workpapers and calculations by Gurdon McGavock (N&W motive power department) were found at N&WHS archives. On March 14, 1945, there is one page related to estimated firebox volume of a Class J for a proposed Franklin System of Steam Distribution (poppet valves, no type specified). Apparently Franklin requested this information from N&W. It's not known whether N&W was seriously considering this possiblity, or whether Franklin was developing an unsolicited proposal. Additional correspondence is referenced, but has not been located at this point. No poppet valve installation was ever made on a J or any other N&W locomotive.

Generally, the benefits of poppet valves are more pronounced at higher rotational speeds. It's very doubtful that the Y6's performance would have been improved by their use. The A and J may have theoretically benefitted at higher speeds, but the reduced back pressure may have made them both harder to handle. Simplicity was likely the best path for N&W to follow. They did pretty well by adhering to it.

[Anonymous]

In addition to seperating the issue into economics and technology, I wonder if strong vs. weak railroads also factor into it. Roads like the Santa-Fe ran their F units on passenger trains right up to Amtrak. They also had that CF7 rebuilding program. UP also diselized in a more measured fashion and they had some first hand experience with diesels from running them on the City Streamliners. Did weaker roads such as the Rock Island see diesels as a silver bullet to solve all their problems and did the easy payment plans just postpone the inevitable?