Steam Locomotives versus Diesels

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cementmixr

This Brown is an outsider looking in. I am not particularly pursuaded by commentary from outsiders on the railroad industry. The woods are full of self-styled railroad experts. In my opinion, the place to start an analysis like this one is with primary source documents as found in a railroad company's archives. Surely every railroad made internal studies on the impact of dieselization. Where are the internal studies? I guess nobody here has read them.

Do you know Brown's background?

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer

Sayeth futuremodal:

"With that being said, Mr. Sol has done a far better job of presenting a clear consise hypothesis than has Old Timer. Hands down."

Sorry, guys. I didn't realize I had to present a hypothesis. My position is that what should have happened did happen (dieselization, that is, if you've forgotten), and it happened for the best, and without it having happened, several railroads wouldn't have made it.

I'm not the one trying to revise history here, and history speaks for itself in spite of what Mr. Brown and his disciples have to say about it. If a good case needs to be made, they're the ones who need to make it, and they've all fallen short.

If what I said represents an "attack" on Mr. Brown, so be it.

Old Timer

This is just amazing.

Old Timer still is suggesting that Brown, Sol, et al are claiming that dieselization was bad. Hmmm, senility or obfuscation on Old Timer's part?

I'll give it one last shot. Here it goes....

1. Dieselization was a good thing. No one is arguing anything to the contrary.

2. Going into massive debt for new technology that has no established long term track record is a bad thing. Do you wi***o argue that point to the contrary? If not, then state so for the record.

3. Junking older techology that has not used most of it's useful service life can often result in not meeting those original investment goals. You paid good money for those things, so if you don't use them to their full depreciation, your investment on that technology was wasted. Ergo, your new investment not only has to pay for itself, it also has to make up for the wasted investment as well in order to be a justified expenditure. If it doesn't, you've just compounded the wasted investment. Do you wi***o argue this point to the contrary? If not, state so for the record.

Do you get it now, Old Timer?

Dieselization wasn't bad. However, selling out to EMD en masse did result in a corresponding drop in ROI, as one should expect when corporations go into debt for unestablished technology. Getting rid of equipment that still had years of useful service life only compounded the debt accumulation.

[AnthonyV]

I have heard the phrase "diesels can't pull what they can start and steam can't start what they can pull" numerous times. I have also read statements about Diesels being good for drag service but steam can really pull at speed.

Wouldn't a Diesel pull the same tonnage at the same speed as a steam locomotive as long as the hp ratings are the same? If the hp is the same, wouldn't this translate into the same tractive effort for a given speed?

For example, if a set of Diesels is rated at say, 6,000 hp and a steam loco is rated at a peak of 6,000 hp at 40 mph, wouldn't they pull the same tonnage at 40 mph since they would have the same tractive effort at that point?

Also, wouldn't Diesels actually pull more over all other speeds since the power output is constant over most of its speed range while the steam loco's power output varies greatly with speed?

Finally, doesn't this mean that the Diesels can always have more trailing tonnage than a steam loco with equal power?

Is this correct or am I missing something?

Thanks and happy New Year!

Anthony V.

[MichaelSol]

Oh, I think you're probably right. The saying is just that, an old saying. However, I do think that at the slow speeds and needs of yard work, I am sure without really knowing much about steam that the diesel-electric was better. The power curves show that, but, a steam engineer who ran one might have a different story. Never underestimate an operator's knowledge of the machine.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[MJ4562]

What exactly is the useful life of a steam locomotive and what type of repairs have to be done during that life?

[Anonymous]

Sayeth futuremodal, again:

"This is just amazing.

Old Timer still is suggesting that Brown, Sol, et al are claiming that dieselization was bad. Hmmm, senility or obfuscation on Old Timer's part?

I'll give it one last shot. Here it goes...."

I went back and read my post, and the amazing part is that you don't get it.

So, having better things to do, I'll leave you with your ideas. At this late date, they're pointless, anyway.

Old Timer

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH

Keeping the newer steam power is service until it was fully depreciated makes sense if that fact is taken in isolation. Other factors to be considered include the added cost of maintaining two sets of maintenance facilities at any location where steam would be operated unless steam and diesel operation would be strictly segregated, ....

This never happened.

As a practical matter, Milwaukee Road operated maintenance facilities at the following locations where three types of motive power -- steam, diesel, and electric -- intermingled just fine, often sitting on adjacent service platforms: Harlowton, Deer Lodge, Avery, Othello, and Tacoma.

Most railroads mixed steam and diesel at existing facilities during the 10-15 year transition just fine.

On the other hand, the "need" to appear modern may have driven some decisions to build new "diesel" facilities, although there was nothing special about them: what was happening was that the run-through design was replacing the roundhouse.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Randy Stahl]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH

Keeping the newer steam power is service until it was fully depreciated makes sense if that fact is taken in isolation. Other factors to be considered include the added cost of maintaining two sets of maintenance facilities at any location where steam would be operated unless steam and diesel operation would be strictly segregated, ....

This never happened.

As a practical matter, Milwaukee Road operated maintenance facilities at the following locations where three types of motive power -- steam, diesel, and electric -- intermingled just fine, often sitting on adjacent service platforms: Harlowton, Deer Lodge, Avery, Othello, and Tacoma.

Most railroads mixed steam and diesel at existing facilities during the 10-15 year transition just fine.

On the other hand, the "need" to appear modern may have driven some decisions to buid new "diesel" facilities, although their was nothing special about them: what was happening was that the run-through design was replacing the roundhouse, which had nothing to do with dieselization.

Best regards, Michael Sol

However , roundhouses will always be THE most efficient way to service power. Take it from someone who has worked in a wide variety of facilitys.
Randy

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer
[Sorry, guys. I didn't realize I had to present a hypothesis. My position is that what should have happened did happen (dieselization, that is, if you've forgotten), and it happened for the best, and without it having happened, several railroads wouldn't have made it.

I'm not the one trying to revise history here, and history speaks for itself in spite of what Mr. Brown and his disciples have to say about it. If a good case needs to be made, they're the ones who need to make it, and they've all fallen short.

If what I said represents an "attack" on Mr. Brown, so be it.

Dave, I agree. This represents an intentional misreading. Apparently it is much easier to make up something and shoot it down, than to deal with the real argument, backed up by a statistical record.

I note that OldTimer emphatically dismisses Brown's study.

Hasn't read it he says.

Has lots of opinions about it though.

I think that pretty well sums up OldTimer's approach to the industry: a series of half-connected predjudices conveyed by the virulent slander of a respected senior railroad consulting engineer, underscored by no supporting statistical data of his own, compounded by a fundamental misunderstanding of the stated premise.

It certainly makes an interesting resume.

However, it's not as tough to figure out as OldTimer makes it.

Klahm posted this summary:

QUOTE: Originally posted by Klahm
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. ... A more gradual and intelligent approach to the transition would have resulted in better bottom-line performance.

And while that represents about the fifth iteration of the concept that OldTimer has been unable or unwilling to grasp, that version sums it up nicely.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

Mr. Sol,

If I am not mistaken you were arguing that switching to diesels caused a drop in ROI, did you not? If not what have you been discussing for 13 pages?

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by cementmixr

This Brown is an outsider looking in. I am not particularly pursuaded by commentary from outsiders on the railroad industry. The woods are full of self-styled railroad experts. In my opinion, the place to start an analysis like this one is with primary source documents as found in a railroad company's archives. Surely every railroad made internal studies on the impact of dieselization. Where are the internal studies? I guess nobody here has read them.

Do you know Brown's background?

I am gathering from the lack of a response that the answer is "no," and that the remark was made with no idea as to whether H.F. Brown was an "outsider looking in" or a highly experienced professional engineer with an impressive railroading background. Unfortunately, nothing unusual about uninformed commentary passed off as knowledgeable opinion on these forums.

cementmixr: "I am not particularly pursuaded by commentary from outsiders on the railroad industry."

Of course, if you wanted to pick an experienced railroad organization; one that had pioneered railroading, had introduced railroading to such diverse places as India, Austrailia, South Africa, and other disparate parts of the planet, and you were thinking from an international perspective you might see British Rail as an experienced railroad organization.

Now cementmxr isn't pursuaded by Brown's credentials, but British Rail was. When they looked for the most experienced and respected Professional Engineer they could find to conduct their dieselization study, they went to H.F. Brown.

I guess the woods are indeed full of "self-styled railroad experts" who disparage someone like Brown, when the rail industry itself has a different opinion.

Now, as to the odd comment made above: "tIn my opinion, the place to start an analysis like this one is with primary source documents as found in a railroad company's archives."

I say this is an "odd" comment for two reasons.

The term "primary source documents" is a term of art. In accounting, engineering, and consulting, anyone who utters the phrase "primary source documents" means one thing: original receipts.

And this is one point that makes the remark "odd." Original receipts are practically meaningless in this context, aside from the fact that there would be about four billion of them for any particular railroad during this time span, the receipts tell the investigator just about zilch because the receipt itself contains no information as to how the invoice was handled, what account it was entered on, what special ledger it went to, etc.

The second point that made the remark odd was the fact that, if these "primary source documents" were in fact available in "railroad archives," after 160 or so years of railroading those archives would take up about the equivalent of Kansas for storage space.

For that reason, ICC/STB rules permit the destruction of such "primary documents" after a statutory period of time.

The documents available in railroad archives on such matters are not "primary," and they are not even usually secondary, they are the special ledgers and, if detailed enough, the general ledgers, which are most likely tertiary or even quaternary level documents.

If you have done some studies, you would be aware of that.

On the other hand, if you have never actually participated in the interesting process of conducting a study like that, you would probably have misconceptions about the process, notwithstanding the strong opinions about it all that those misconceptions apparently support.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by cementmixr

This Brown is an outsider looking in. I am not particularly pursuaded by commentary from outsiders on the railroad industry. The woods are full of self-styled railroad experts. In my opinion, the place to start an analysis like this one is with primary source documents as found in a railroad company's archives. Surely every railroad made internal studies on the impact of dieselization. Where are the internal studies? I guess nobody here has read them.

Do you know Brown's background?
Best regards, Michael Sol

Actually, I suspect there are probably not that many internal studies done post-mortem on diesel financing. Probably there were many done prior to it, projecting anticipated returns (these would have been prepared for the board of directors) but probably not that many after-the-fact studies. Companies don't have time and resources to spend writing histories about themselves; the past is a sunk cost, and their focus is on what's ahead.

Someday maybe I will search for the Brown study while at the college library.

--

OldTimer does not have any bad intentions or sinister motives here. He's just talking straight and telling us how he feels. Railroaders talk that way, and to me the honesty is refreshing. It wouldn't be much of a railroad forum if we drove away all the authentic railroaders, would it?

[Anonymous]

Mr. Sol and I were posting at the same time, and I just read his reply.

What I meant by "primary sources" was anything in a railroads archives, any kind of written matter such as reports and studies, etc, created by the company's own internal experts. I meant to use this term to contrast with published work from people outside the company, such as in trade journals, Media, newspapers, etc. Mr. Brown was an outside consultant, so his write-up in the Mechanical Engineeering journal you cite is an out-siders take on the matter. I never intended any criticism of him whatsoever.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by The Duke


If I am not mistaken you were arguing that switching to diesels caused a drop in ROI, did you not? If not what have you been discussing for 13 pages?

Well, I also said this:

QUOTE: The compromise of those two positions is even more intriguing. And this is Brown's conclusion. Diesel-electric technology was the hands down winner for yard work. The old saying "diesels can start what they can't pull, and steam can pull what it can't start," has no better application than for yard work. More importantly, the lower overall "stress" on the machine gave those yard diesels life spans as long as steam. They were a net economic benefit.

However, my opinion is beside the point, Brown's study, and the quick and dirty Milwaukee Road study I did above show the same thing: that. overall, dieselization generated no savings for the railroads, rather, it increased the economic burden of American railways.

In the case of the Milwaukee, no deductions were made for the net loss associated with the scrapping of undepreciated assets, of nearly $40 million.

And what I have tried to clarify is that it was the timing and extent of dieselization that caused this to happen.

You can see that plainly in the Milwaukee graphs. It would have been possible to dieselize at a rate that caused the finance charges to accrue more slowly. As direct fuel and maintenance costs declined due to traffic losses, it would have been possible to incur the financing charges at such a rate so that the increase would be slower than the decline in other operating costs. In this fashion, railroads could have enjoyed lower operating costs from dieselization rather than higher costs.

What was interesting to me is that financing charges and depreciation associated with the dieselization process became the primary direct cost associated with the dieselization process. That expense quickly came to exceed the maintenance and fuel costs.

And this was during a period when financing charges ranged from between 1% and 3.5%.

My observations above, and Brown's study, don't really look past 1959. What were the net costs during the 1960s for dieselization, at interest charges of 5-10%? Imagine the Milwaukee financing curves shown previously on this list with those charnges. The direct costs would be about 20% higher. Financing charges had become the most costly part of running the trains.

I suppose it raises the question. Would, or could, dieselization have occured but for the inordinately low financing costs unique to that particular time period?

Best regards, Michael Sol

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cementmixr

Mr. Sol and I were posting at the same time, and I just read his reply.

What I meant by "primary sources" was anything in a railroads archives, any kind of written matter such as reports and studies, etc, created by the company's own internal experts. I meant to use this term to contrast with published work from people outside the company, such as in trade journals, Media, newspapers, etc. Mr. Brown was an outside consultant, so his write-up in the Mechanical Engineeering journal you cite is an out-siders take on the matter. I never intended any criticism of him whatsoever.

This brings up a key point, and why consultants exist at all.

If the accounting department wants a new computer, and if the accounting department is directed to do the study as to the cost-benefits of a new computer, any bets on what the study will conclude?

And, if management wants a follow-up study on how much improvement the new computer offered to the company, and the same accounting department does the study, any bets as to how impressive the performance of the new computer will be?

But, it is even more significant than a fundamental conflict of interest that occurs when departments offer studies of their own performance metrics. Consultants like H.F. Brown typically carry the designation "P.E.," Professional Engineer.

They have the expertise to do a real study on something like this, that a typical mechanical officer, no matter how experienced, simply would not have. In that era, few railroads had a P.E. on staff. It's like saying you've got a company full of good bookkeepers, but you are asking them for a CPA's skill and training.

There is no comparison between the reliability and integrity of the kind of study conducted by a P.E. like Brown, both educated and experienced in exactly these kinds of things, as compared to an internal study most likely conflicted as to motive, by a staff who has never done one before and has no training to do one.

And that goes back to the experience of British Rail. If they merely wanted opinions on dieselization, they could have called up their colleagues at the Pennsylvania, at the New York Central, at the Santa Fe, at the Milwaukee and simply asked.

They already knew what kind of answers they would get. Probably OldTimer would have answered the phone, he would have misunderstood the question and they would have gotten a very strong opinion decorated with half-baked prejudices not based on actual economic or operating data.

When you want a real answer by someone who knows how to put together a study, how to handle economic data, and what to look for, and you want someone who is not personally invested in the decision, and in the outcome, you turn to someone like Brown. You have to.

And of course, this begs the question. British Rail wanted a study upon which to base its future actions. An 'internal" study wouldn't have done it much good compared to an industry wide study of railroads already substantially dieselized. In the context of this thread, there was no such thing as an "internal" study.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

Fair enough.

[AnthonyV]

Michael:

I have tried unsuccessfully to obtain Brown's study. Do you know where or how to get a copy, even for a fee?

You commented that fuel and maintenance cost declined because of traffic losses. Yet your last graph shows fuel and maintenance costs are presented in terms of cost per revenue ton. Wouldn't presenting the data on a revenue ton basis eliminate the effect of traffic on the data?

Accounting for inflation, fuel and maintenance costs in constant dollars declined substantially on a revenue ton basis. This suggests that substantial efficiency gains were realized by Dieselization. These were negated by the finance charges as you stated many times.

However, you agreed that locomotive costs were the same on a constant dollar basis before and after Dieselization. You also agreed that is true that MOW expenditures decreased as a result of decreases in revenue.

One thing I cannot understand is if locomotive costs stayed constant (in constant dollars), how could have this affected the ROI? Stated another way, say the railroad has a dollar to spend. With steam, it spends it on fuel and maintenance. With Diesel, it spends the same amount in real terms (i.e., one dollar) on fuel, maintenance, and finance charges. Either way, it spent a dollar. How would this affect the bottom line, i.e., the ROI.

How did the drop in revenue affect the ROI?

Thanks
Anthony V

[selector]

This thread has great legs!

FWIW, here is an intersting historical perspective of one railroad, the WP. Takes about 5 mins to read all sections.

http://www.wplives.com/diesel/Second_Generation/second_generation.html[:o)]

[Murphy Siding]

Perhaps I missed this detail. Did the railroads finance the purchase of steam locomotives, or pay cash for them?

[Anonymous]

Gentlemen:

Let's evaluate Mr. Brown's study, and your extrapolations springing therefrom:

Unless it can be demonstrated that Mr. Brown's study influenced the thinking of railroad managements, and changed the course of their financial history, it has no value other than to pique the imaginations of those who'd like to come along fifty years after the fact and try to plant a big "gotcha" on the railroad managements of the day.

This has been my reaction from the start. I haven't studied Mr. Brown's work (and I don't really care how many initials he places after his name, although some of you obviously do) because I know the results. It had no effect.

Now, we've spent 13 pages discussing it, and nobody has shown that there has been any value to it.

So spend another 13 pages trying to plant your "gotcha"'s. You won't have any more effect on the world of railroading than you've already had. Your imaginations have been piqued, though - ad nauseum. Hooray.

Old Timer

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Old Timer
Unless it can be demonstrated that Mr. Brown's study influenced the thinking of railroad managements, and changed the course of their financial history....

You've missed the point, yet again. You mistate the thesis, misinterpret the results, personally attack a respected professional engineer, and then claim some poor competence in the field. You leave the thread in a huff, then insist on returning to misinterpret something new.

Brown's point is that the lack of thinking on the part of railroad managements led to decisions and actions that did, indeed, change the course of their financial histories.

Any decision that adds to the financial burdens of corporations that cannot earn their cost of capital and have declining revenues is a negative decision because companies like that cannot afford mistakes on an industry-wide scale.

The salient points of every post you have made here are to 1) misunderstand what is being said, and 2) offer zero, absolutely zero, proof of your own contentions. You constantly demonstrate you don't even understand the conversation. All in all, all you've offered is a lot of hot air.

Anyone looking at important financial decisions that go wrong are, typically, attempting to find out why so that the future does not repeat the past.

You obviously don't like the thread. You also obviously have nothing positive or useful to contribute to it.

Why do you insist on returning and proving those points?

Best regards, Michael Sol

[germanium]

Well said, Michael, along with all your other excellent, lucid posts.

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by AnthonyV

I have tried unsuccessfully to obtain Brown's study. Do you know where or how to get a copy, even for a fee?

Oh gosh, I have always assumed it was available through ILL. I have a copy, "somewhere," and if I can locate it, I'll make it available.

QUOTE: You commented that fuel and maintenance cost declined because of traffic losses. Yet your last graph shows fuel and maintenance costs are presented in terms of cost per revenue ton. Wouldn't presenting the data on a revenue ton basis eliminate the effect of traffic on the data?

The revenue ton basis is to show that the costs of actually carrying freight didn't change as a result of dieselization.

QUOTE: Accounting for inflation, fuel and maintenance costs in constant dollars declined substantially on a revenue ton basis. This suggests that substantial efficiency gains were realized by Dieselization. These were negated by the finance charges as you stated many times.

If fuel costs and maintenance costs tracked inflation, yes.

QUOTE: However, you agreed that locomotive costs were the same on a constant dollar basis before and after Dieselization. You also agreed that is true that MOW expenditures decreased as a result of decreases in revenue.
One thing I cannot understand is if locomotive costs stayed constant (in constant dollars), how could have this affected the ROI? Stated another way, say the railroad has a dollar to spend. With steam, it spends it on fuel and maintenance. With Diesel, it spends the same amount in real terms (i.e., one dollar) on fuel, maintenance, and finance charges. Either way, it spent a dollar. How would this affect the bottom line, i.e., the ROI. How did the drop in revenue affect the ROI?

The "constant dollar" method of comparison is tricky, because it doesn't do a very good job on estimating productivity gains. It is further complicated by the fact that individual classifications inflate at different rates. Fuel, particularly petroleum, is a notoriously volatile market maker that often tracks poorly with inflation. Here, the bulk of the inflation occured before dieselization really took off, and a better measure would be to pick a different comparison date.

Looking at it somewhat differently, simply showing percentage changes in key categories, comparing 1945 to 1962, revenue was pretty flat during that period.
...................................1945/1962
Operating Revenue ......-0.56%
Operating Expenses ....-3.14%
Net Tons ....................-24.49%
Fuel ...........................-24.88%
Maintenance ..............-10.06%
Financing Charges ... +589.00%
Fuel+Main.+Finance ...+25.97%
MOW .........................-41.06%
.
You can see from this that the financing costs created an identifiable budget problem. Fuel and maintenance efficiency gains were overwhelmed by the finance charges. The combined total of these expenses associated with Dieselization increased by 25% even as revenue declined. Plus, this adds $113,084,848 in new assets during that time period, yet generates a negative rate of return on those assets. I don't know how this could not have affected ROI, unless something else was cut dramatically.

Something had to give. Either the ROI broke down, or other operating expenses took the hit. It looks like roadway maintenance either had enormous productivity gains, unlikely, or it just got cut. These numbers would, however, prompt an analyst to look a little further, something else was also offering a drag to earnings, in addition to the financing charges,the MOW reductions more than offset the financing charges.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[germanium]

May I ask the question - if Financing charges were excluded, would it give a truer comparison figure ? The vast increase in those same Financing charges would seem to suggest that diesels were purchased rather than leased (or does the increase reflect the cost of new facilities ?).
I'm looking only at the figures in your last post, and admittedly with no great knowledge of the subject.

[AnthonyV]

Michael:

Regarding obtaining the Brown reference, I meant to ask if it was available on line.

Questions regarding two issues:

The first is how to post a graph in this forum - I don't know what to do after I click the insert image button. Also, what format must the image be in?

In your previous reply, you stated that Dieselization added to the financial burden of the railroads. How did it add to it when the cost/revenue ton levels are essentially constant when expressed in real terms?

I'll present a graph of results of analysis of your data once I find out how to do it.

Thanks

Anthony V

[MichaelSol]

QUOTE: Originally posted by germanium

May I ask the question - if Financing charges were excluded, would it give a truer comparison figure ? The vast increase in those same Financing charges would seem to suggest that diesels were purchased rather than leased (or does the increase reflect the cost of new facilities ?).
I'm looking only at the figures in your last post, and admittedly with no great knowledge of the subject.

The numbers shown do not reflect the following:

1) Opportunity cost of $40,000,000 in accelerated depreciation charges. These would, in the years incurred, show a significant impact on an accounting basis to the cost of operations, and a further impact on ROI. In fact, it did, we just haven't looked at it here.

2) The cost of additional facilities constructed after 1945 associated wtih Dieselization. Brown estimated that by 1957 this amounted to $2.7 billion, and this was further increased to about $4 billion by the mid-to-late 1960s. Naturally, this additional investment -- if Dieselization was not paying for itself -- would have further negative impact on ROI if included in the numbers.

These were, in this era, purchases, not leases at least at Milwaukee Road. Given that these figures do not show a "cost" associated with the additional capital investment required, as well as the losses associated with scrapping of substantially undepreciated assets, it is safe to say that the numbers shown are a best case scenario, that a truer picture of the effect on ROI would be worse than what is shown.

It certainly could make it look better for dieselization by not considering as many of hte associated costs as possible.

The things that made Dieselization initially attractive -- low fuel costs and low interest rates -- were both items that would change dramatically in the future. It would be only a few years, relatively speaking, before coal would once again be far cheaper than diesel-- that shifted a key cost factor back in favor of steam -- and that interest rates would be climbing toward, then past 10% -- which shifted a key cost consideration back in favor of long-lived road power, which was steam.

Today, for instance, the fuel cost substantially exceeds the financing cost on a locomotive hour basis, but the financing cost is still four times the cost as the period 1945-1957, and the cost of diesel fuel is a little over five times times higher than the equivalent cost of coal these days.

If the same decision were being made today, it would be an interesting argument because the key factors that favored Dieselization, 1945-1960, no longer offer any advantages, rather disadvantages.

Best regards, Michael Sol

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

Perhaps I missed this detail. Did the railroads finance the purchase of steam locomotives, or pay cash for them?

My [2c]:

Remember, steam locomotive purchases were done on a staggered as needed basis, not purchased as a wholesale changeover of the entire locomotive fleet. As railroads grew out of the 1800's and into the 1900's, they added more newer steam as necessary, and ran their old steam into the ground before it was scrapped or rebuilt.

The main point of the Brown study was that the advent of dieselization resulted in a wholesale locomotive fleet changeover in a relatively short amount of time, thus for the first time in the industry's history they accumulated a debtload before which had been unseen. This action also resulted in a large percentage of each railroad's steam locomotive fleet being scrapped when those locomotives still had 20 or 30 years of useful service life. Thus the cost of lost depreciation.

Look at the WP link provided by selector. Western Pacific bought brand new 2-8-8-2's and 4-6-6-4's in 1937. Within 15 years those still new locomotives had been scrapped in favor of the new diesels, so those steamers probably had at least another 15 years of useful service life, and probably would have been good for another 30 years. Then look at the life span of WP's first FT diesels. They barely lasted 10 years before they were in need of replacement!

Even without the benefit of the Brown study, the problems of premature massive dieselization should be obvious to anyone.

[germanium]

Reminds me of the old proverb "Marry in haste and repent at leisure", except than when they went down the drain they took the stockholders with them before they had a chance to repent. I'm not so sure that railroad (railway) managements would be any wiser even in today's economic climate.

[txhighballer]

QUOTE: Originally posted by AnthonyV

I have heard the phrase "diesels can't pull what they can start and steam can't start what they can pull" numerous times. I have also read statements about Diesels being good for drag service but steam can really pull at speed.

Wouldn't a Diesel pull the same tonnage at the same speed as a steam locomotive as long as the hp ratings are the same? If the hp is the same, wouldn't this translate into the same tractive effort for a given speed?

For example, if a set of Diesels is rated at say, 6,000 hp and a steam loco is rated at a peak of 6,000 hp at 40 mph, wouldn't they pull the same tonnage at 40 mph since they would have the same tractive effort at that point?

Also, wouldn't Diesels actually pull more over all other speeds since the power output is constant over most of its speed range while the steam loco's power output varies greatly with speed?

Finally, doesn't this mean that the Diesels can always have more trailing tonnage than a steam loco with equal power?

Is this correct or am I missing something?

Thanks and happy New Year!

Anthony V.

Anthony:

Read my earlier post on your comment on this thread. In short,a diesel locomotives tractive effort and tractive effort are at maximum when starting.A steam locomotive has it's full tractive effort available,but not it's full horsepower.

[daveklepper]

I commented on the Boston and Maine's rapid dieselization program earlier, and pointed out why their conditions made diesilization the right step. But what about the Norfolk and Western? They had modern steam power and efficient servicing and use of that power. They bought some Jeeps for a branch line with light axel loadings and then some nine years later they were all diesel. With on-line coal mines and coal being a big part of their business. And they were always and efficient and wellrun railroad.