QUOTE: Originally posted by rgroeling QUOTE: Originally posted by solzrules QUOTE: Originally posted by germanium The railroad to heaven will be powered by steam locos, built of imperishable components so there will be no adverse effect on the ROI. The coal used to fuel them will be hand-loaded into hoppers in Hell by those railroad executives who believe in diesels. Well, we can dream !! Yes but the Brown study clearly showed that. . . . . . . oh. wait. [:D] Yes but if you look at the fact that these heavan trains will not be quite profitable to due to the expense of obtaining the coal.......bah!!! [(-D][(-D][(-D]
QUOTE: Originally posted by solzrules QUOTE: Originally posted by germanium The railroad to heaven will be powered by steam locos, built of imperishable components so there will be no adverse effect on the ROI. The coal used to fuel them will be hand-loaded into hoppers in Hell by those railroad executives who believe in diesels. Well, we can dream !! Yes but the Brown study clearly showed that. . . . . . . oh. wait. [:D]
QUOTE: Originally posted by germanium The railroad to heaven will be powered by steam locos, built of imperishable components so there will be no adverse effect on the ROI. The coal used to fuel them will be hand-loaded into hoppers in Hell by those railroad executives who believe in diesels. Well, we can dream !!
QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73 By 1947 the Milwaukee Road had purchased ALCOs, Baldwins, Davenports, EMDs, FMs, GEs and Whitcombs. Does the study chastise the railroads for buying locomotives from so many companies ?
QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73 Michael, The Milwaukee Road decided to completely dieselize in 1947, which may may have been influenced by the 1946 coalminers strike. Does Mr. Brown's study mention the effects of this strike on the railroad's dieselization plans ?
QUOTE: Originally posted by up829 History is an excellent teaching tool and certainly usefull in figuring out who to blame for legal proceedings, but past performance does not always predict future success and often decisions have to be made based on incomplete or unknown information. The results and an accurate assesment of some aspects may not be possible for years afterward. Those who made the decision and approved it may be long gone and if there's no possibiility to do it over, there's little to be gained by spending a a lot of time looking backwards. CEOs and boards just don't have the time to do much of that. Business schools also do case studies into something called the Technology Life Cycle, which gets into the risks, rewards, costs, and service life of technology at various points in time. In that context, dieselization and the demise of steam followed a very typical pattern. Early adopters at the leading edge in the 30s took the greatest risk, but solved specific problems i.e. lower cost lightweight passenger trains designed to increase ridership and market share. Early FT adopters used them to solve operational problems with long non-electrified tunnels i.e. Stampede & Moffat. By the post war period when most roads dieselized, the technology was new but proven both by the early users and wartime use by the Navy. Many of the F3's purchased at this time were later upgraded to F9's and continued to run in mainline service well past the date Brown's study was done. Steam was in the obsolete phase of the life cycle and like buying a Pentium 3 notebook or analog cell phone today, had a very short service life. Some organizations are very sucessful at betting the company on new technology. Boeing has done this repeatedly with the B17, 707, 747, and most recently the 777. Others I won't mention, constantly look over their shoulder at something they shouldn't have done and get run over by something unexpected. Railroads with a few exceptions, tend to be fairly conservative, and as an industry dieselized following the classic business school model, albeit some much better than others. Deploying new technology across a distributed organization is one of the most difficult strategic decisions organizations face. When it doesn't produce the expected results for an entire industry, the reasons are usually complex, similar to engineering disasters which involve multiple component failures in unanticipated ways. Was the engineer who designed the World Trade Center an incompetent fool because he did not forsee a terrorist crashing a fully loaded jumbo jet into it?
QUOTE: Originally posted by up829 In order to measure whether a sound business decision was made, you also need to know what ALL the assumptions actually were and if they were realistic and achievable at the time the decision was made. Brown's study goes into one scenario, but there may be others.
QUOTE: Originally posted by bigfoote I like them both.Thats why I model the 50's in N-Scale. I was woundering, how a steam train pulling 12 cars with a diesel helper go the same speed, are they throttled together, or do they use radios?
QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73 MichaelSol- Does Brown say the railroads should have dieselized, but just in a different manner ? You have posted on this thread that switchers had different economics, and they should have been replaced first. What does Brown say about all of the road steam power that was worn out at the end of WW2 ? (Like CMSP&P's slobber-stacks ?). Does he say they should have been replaced post war with newer steam (like 4-8-4s) or diesels ? Did he have different findings on post-war freight or passenger locomotives ?
QUOTE: Originally posted by ajmiller QUOTE: Originally posted by solzrules HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Hey, you forgot an M in HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
QUOTE: Originally posted by solzrules HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
QUOTE: Originally posted by up829 Even if taken at face value, Browns study is after the fact while business decisions are based on assumptions about the future, without benefit of a crystal ball. Can anyone predict what interest rates, inflation, and the price of oil will be 10 years from now? Should a fleet taxi or truck operator invest in hybrid technology, wait for hydrogen, or keep buying conventional gas/diesel? Keep in mind that during Bush I, economic growth was spotty, inflation and interest rates were moderate, we had huge deficits and oil was $30/barrel. Conventional wisdom at the time was that things weren't likely to change anytime soon. During the 90s, we had great growth, low inflation and interest rates, the elimination of the deficit, and $13-$18 oil.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer Michael Sol - as I said before, neither TomDiehl nor myself has to produce anything to refute the specious arguments you've put forth at great length. HISTORY has already done it for us. Now, you obviously consider yourself as a person of superior intelligence; you think that anyone who disagrees with you is a, well, substandard intellect. Your problem lies in the fact that there is a tremendous disparity between your perceived level of intelligence and your actual level. If your actual level of intelligence was up to the level of your perception of it, you'd have been able to realize that HISTORY has proven you and Mr. Brown as wrong as you can be, and you'd further realize that you've wasted about 25 of the pages of this thread. Old Timer
QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer Michael Sol - as I said before, neither TomDiehl nor myself has to produce anything to refute the specious arguments you've put forth at great length. HISTORY has already done it for us. Now, you obviously consider yourself as a person of superior intelligence; you think that anyone who disagrees with you is a, well, substandard intellect. Your problem lies in the fact that there is a tremendous disparity between your perceived level of intelligence and your actual level. If your actual level of intelligence was up to the level of your perception of it, you'd have been able to realize that HISTORY has proven you and Mr. Brown as wrong as you can be, and you'd further realize that you've wasted about 25 of the pages of this thread. Old Timer You must be right. HISTORY shows your every word to be true. The ICC statistics are all wrong. Railroad ROI actually went up. Railroad maintenance investment went up because of the great savings in motive power costs. Profits surged. Railroads entered an era of great prosperity in the 1960s. Train speeds increased, derailments declined. By the 1970s, it was an absolute railroad paradise. No railroads were in receivership. More passenger trains were added. New employees were being hired on in droves. None of that could have happened without the substantial benefits resulting from Dieselization. H.F. Brown was certainly proven wrong by HISTORY. When's the book come out? Best regards, Michael Sol
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