greyhounds wrote: futuremodal wrote:[ Is this the same C&IM who's owners - a few short years after dieselization - tried to jettison by offering the line for $1? (Yep, that's one dollar!)And there were no takers!Yes.The GM&O beat 'em cold.The rail/barge movement through Havana couldn't compete with the GM&O unit trains. Doesn't change things a bit. Diesels trumped steam.Somebody could write a book on how George Stern "saved" the C&IM. Eventually, there was a "taker".Today it's part of the Genesee & Wyoming family and known as the "Illinois & Midland."
futuremodal wrote:[ Is this the same C&IM who's owners - a few short years after dieselization - tried to jettison by offering the line for $1? (Yep, that's one dollar!)And there were no takers!
Is this the same C&IM who's owners - a few short years after dieselization - tried to jettison by offering the line for $1? (Yep, that's one dollar!)
And there were no takers!
Yes.
The GM&O beat 'em cold.
The rail/barge movement through Havana couldn't compete with the GM&O unit trains. Doesn't change things a bit. Diesels trumped steam.
Somebody could write a book on how George Stern "saved" the C&IM. Eventually, there was a "taker".
Today it's part of the Genesee & Wyoming family and known as the "Illinois & Midland."
Not to take you to task on a subject of which you know more than I, but the GM&O beat them cold? How was the GM&O in competition with the C&IM?
The Wabash/N&W served at Taylorville, the IC at Divernon, the IC at Havahna, the CNW at Athens, you name it at Peoria.
Admittedly, the GM&O served the C&IM's location of Springfield, but the C&IM did ship coal to Springfield--or did it before my time?Did the GM&O serve Peoria?
Oh, wait a minute, I am forgetting the old GM&O line that cut across the state aren't I but is no longer in existence. Was that the souce of the competition?
Once again, I am not disagreeing with you, I am just confused how this could have been the case.
Gabe
MichaelSol wrote: JonathanS wrote: BigJim wrote: It seemed to purport that eleven diesels could do what 30 steamers did. Could there be more?As far as the N&W's Y6 classes were concerned, it took 2 1/2 GP9's to haul the same tonnage as one Y6.But when that Y6 dropped its train it headed for the roundhouse for service and to wait for the next road freight. The set of 3 geeps could be broken up and used for switching the yard, for local peddlers, for light branch lines (such as the Abingdon branch) while they were waiting for the road freight. The Y was unsuitable for most of those duties. So in this case, not counting the higher out of service time typical for steam (yes I know the last of the A, J & Y classes on N&W and the Niagaras on the NYC but they were the exceptions and had outstanding availabilities), 3 diesels easily replaced 4 steam locomotives.Well, I doubt there is support for the idea that 3 1250 hp units replaced four 5,000 hp Northerns anywhere. This is just ridiculous. Even the railroads began to see it differently.Those little GP's that could go anywhere are long gone. When four of them were lashed together to equal the pulling power of a Northern, they ran up four times as many unit miles as the Northern to produce the same amount of work, utilizing thousands of more moving parts. No wonder, as greyhounds accurately points out above, railroads were positively anxious to move to the next generation of Diesel-electric motive power.MILW was the first to realize that "GP" wasn't the solution it was cracked up to be -- and ordered the first "SD." Since then, it's been a horsepower race -- trying to get single unit locomotives back up to where Steam was 60 years ago -- 5000 and 6000 hp single unit designs.But that trend is exactly contrary to the poster's contention about the Y6. It's weight, size and power are what the railroads are trying to buy today. And that has been a tough technological struggle. High HP almost always brings a shorter economic service life. The Northern had a 2,000,0000 mile service life; the first FT's were proudly advertised far and wide as they passed "1,000,000 miles and counting ....", but that was a high water mark, and the big units now appear to be down to about 720,0000 miles. That's almost gasoline engine lifespan -- which is a cheaper fuel now as well.
JonathanS wrote: BigJim wrote: It seemed to purport that eleven diesels could do what 30 steamers did. Could there be more?As far as the N&W's Y6 classes were concerned, it took 2 1/2 GP9's to haul the same tonnage as one Y6.But when that Y6 dropped its train it headed for the roundhouse for service and to wait for the next road freight. The set of 3 geeps could be broken up and used for switching the yard, for local peddlers, for light branch lines (such as the Abingdon branch) while they were waiting for the road freight. The Y was unsuitable for most of those duties. So in this case, not counting the higher out of service time typical for steam (yes I know the last of the A, J & Y classes on N&W and the Niagaras on the NYC but they were the exceptions and had outstanding availabilities), 3 diesels easily replaced 4 steam locomotives.
BigJim wrote: It seemed to purport that eleven diesels could do what 30 steamers did. Could there be more?As far as the N&W's Y6 classes were concerned, it took 2 1/2 GP9's to haul the same tonnage as one Y6.
It seemed to purport that eleven diesels could do what 30 steamers did. Could there be more?
As far as the N&W's Y6 classes were concerned, it took 2 1/2 GP9's to haul the same tonnage as one Y6.
But when that Y6 dropped its train it headed for the roundhouse for service and to wait for the next road freight. The set of 3 geeps could be broken up and used for switching the yard, for local peddlers, for light branch lines (such as the Abingdon branch) while they were waiting for the road freight. The Y was unsuitable for most of those duties. So in this case, not counting the higher out of service time typical for steam (yes I know the last of the A, J & Y classes on N&W and the Niagaras on the NYC but they were the exceptions and had outstanding availabilities), 3 diesels easily replaced 4 steam locomotives.
Well, I doubt there is support for the idea that 3 1250 hp units replaced four 5,000 hp Northerns anywhere. This is just ridiculous.
Even the railroads began to see it differently.
Those little GP's that could go anywhere are long gone. When four of them were lashed together to equal the pulling power of a Northern, they ran up four times as many unit miles as the Northern to produce the same amount of work, utilizing thousands of more moving parts. No wonder, as greyhounds accurately points out above, railroads were positively anxious to move to the next generation of Diesel-electric motive power.
MILW was the first to realize that "GP" wasn't the solution it was cracked up to be -- and ordered the first "SD." Since then, it's been a horsepower race -- trying to get single unit locomotives back up to where Steam was 60 years ago -- 5000 and 6000 hp single unit designs.
But that trend is exactly contrary to the poster's contention about the Y6. It's weight, size and power are what the railroads are trying to buy today.
And that has been a tough technological struggle. High HP almost always brings a shorter economic service life. The Northern had a 2,000,0000 mile service life; the first FT's were proudly advertised far and wide as they passed "1,000,000 miles and counting ....", but that was a high water mark, and the big units now appear to be down to about 720,0000 miles.
That's almost gasoline engine lifespan -- which is a cheaper fuel now as well.
Again you say that now, some 50 year later, when railroads have to do business much differently than in 1945, that because the current business climate requires different decisions, then the decisions made back then must have been incorrect. Amazing!!!!! I wish I had people working for me who could be sure that the decisions we make are correct today and will be the correct decisions forever, no matter the circumstances.
Show me any EMD GP that was 1250 horsepower, I know of a very few 1350 HP that reused FT engines in a GP body, but the GP7 was 1500 and it has been uphill since.
The SD was not developed for higher horsepower. GM came out with the SD7, SD9, and SD18 in respose to the very effective marketing first by Baldwin and later by ALCO marketing six axle power to use on very light rail branchlines. The SD7, SD9 and SD18 exactly matched the horsepower of the equivalant Geeps (and F7 and F9 for the first two). Milwaukee needed something that could go where Geeps were too heavy footed. The SD7 fit the bill nicely, as did the ALCO RSC2, RSD4 and the Baldwin DRS 6-4-1500.
I am surprised at your comment about the cost of diesel. The diesel fuel I purchased today was nearly 10 cents cheaper than the least expensive gasoline at any of the stations I passed on my way to work. Must be some difference in the taxes.
JonathanS wrote: You sure do change your tune often. You repeatedly say that road diesels never achieved 90% availability, but then you turn around and use that same 90% in your calculations to "prove" that diesels were the wrong choice.
You sure do change your tune often. You repeatedly say that road diesels never achieved 90% availability, but then you turn around and use that same 90% in your calculations to "prove" that diesels were the wrong choice.
?
Because, by using the 90% figure, you can hardly complain that I am attempting to bias the calculation by using a figure that you do not accept.
I find it interesting that you are complaining about it anyway.
I was obviously wrong in the thought that in removing a point of contention from the conversation in order to more clearly focus on meaningful matters, that it was even possible to remove a point of contention if somebody just wants to argue.
Certainly, if you wish to substitute a different, and probably more valid, figure, for both steam and diesel -- higher availability for steam, lower for diesel -- you will see that the tractive effort requirements begin to converge. And that makes sense because, as I pointed out earlier, a lb of tractive effort is a lb of tractive effort.
The exercise is suggestive that in this real world example, both the diesel and steam availability percentages, in actual practice, are wrong or meaningless because there is no such things as 100% demand simply because there weren't enough trains to require it. That is, "availability" as a statistical tool is meaningless if the actual utilization falls below the availability percentage.
However, because I gathered you like to argue, I used your number simply to avoid a meaningless series of exchanges on the point.
JonathanS wrote:Again you say that now, some 50 year later, when railroads have to do business much differently than in 1945, that because the current business climate requires different decisions, then the decisions made back then must have been incorrect. Amazing!!!!! I wish I had people working for me who could be sure that the decisions we make are correct today and will be the correct decisions forever, no matter the circumstances.
I'm not sure I wish I had your talent for sarcasm, but I am still wondering about your math.
The SD was designed as a specialty locomotive. As soon as the railroads were sold on the GP idea, rather than the existing steam model which had different designs for different purposes, railroads began demanding exactly the same sort of specialization with the Diesel-electric.
And the trend has been relentlessly back to the high horsepower models represented by the last generation of road Steam.
What was the trend in 1945 and how is that different than the decisions made since then and today?
Well, the rail industry has always recognized the cost efficiency of longer trains. Has that changed since 1945?
The industry was trying to focus on high horsepower, single unit locomotives to power those trains in 1945. The trend has been to get back to that model. Does that mean anything changed in the interim? Yes, the realization that the multiple unit low horsepower model that the industry was convinced to accept as the superior model really wasn't. They are going back for the identical reasons set forth by Brown in his 1957 study which predicted simply that the engineering was wrong behind the concept. And sure enough, railroads are in fact going back to the high horsepower model. I am sure it is just "Amazing!!!" that there might have been sound engineering arguments made at the time which proved to be correct. What is even more amazing to me, however, is the idea that nothing can be predicted by use of sound engineering and economic principles.
JonathanS wrote: As a manager in a manufacturing concern I can say with assurance than for the purposes being discussed here the on stream factor is irrelevant for these calculations. Any capital tool is eating up resources continuously. As long as it is on the books it is taxed, it is depreciated (and I am not talking IRS depreciation I am talking internal corporate depreciation), it requires insurance, and it must receive some level of maintenance, supervision, and security. It does not matter if a locomotive is out on the road earning its keep, in the roundhouse having its boiler washed, or in the shops getting a class 3 overhaul. The locomotive is on the books and it is considered by management, the government, and the stockholders as available and usable. Thus in 1945 the 607,809,000 TM being moved by 1,666,000 lb TE yields 365 TM/lb TE while in 1956 354,689,000 being moved by 816,000 lb TE yields 435 Ton Mile per pound Tractive Effort. Management improved productivity using this yardstick.If I would go to my management and make the case that based on the numbers given here that steam was the better choice because during the hours it is operational it is more productive than diesel and just ignore that it is off line a larger part of each day than are diesels, then I would very quickly be looking for employment elsewhere. The amount of output per month or year per amount of input is what counts.
As a manager in a manufacturing concern I can say with assurance than for the purposes being discussed here the on stream factor is irrelevant for these calculations. Any capital tool is eating up resources continuously. As long as it is on the books it is taxed, it is depreciated (and I am not talking IRS depreciation I am talking internal corporate depreciation), it requires insurance, and it must receive some level of maintenance, supervision, and security. It does not matter if a locomotive is out on the road earning its keep, in the roundhouse having its boiler washed, or in the shops getting a class 3 overhaul. The locomotive is on the books and it is considered by management, the government, and the stockholders as available and usable. Thus in 1945 the 607,809,000 TM being moved by 1,666,000 lb TE yields 365 TM/lb TE while in 1956 354,689,000 being moved by 816,000 lb TE yields 435 Ton Mile per pound Tractive Effort. Management improved productivity using this yardstick.
If I would go to my management and make the case that based on the numbers given here that steam was the better choice because during the hours it is operational it is more productive than diesel and just ignore that it is off line a larger part of each day than are diesels, then I would very quickly be looking for employment elsewhere. The amount of output per month or year per amount of input is what counts.
This is not how you do a productivity study if your company expects accurate results.
In this instance, suppose you had 50 units of Engine Type A, and 30 Units of Engine Type B. At current production levels, you do not need all of the units, and somebody assigns use simply based on engine numbers. As it turns out, the assignment system engages 25 of Engine Type B and and 20 of Engine Tpe A. As it also turns out, the 20 of Engine Type A equals or exceeds the output of the 25 of Engine Type B.
By your method, Engine Type A would be the least productive engine type because 50 of them are not nearly as productive as 30 of Engine Type B, because you are assigning the output of 20 to the 50, and of 25 to the 30. When you do that, you will get the wrong answer every day of the week.
Yet Engine Type A is in fact a better machine if you analyzed by a machine basis, rather than a fleet basis. This is very similar to the statistical error identified by Brown in his critique of fleet-based comparisons.
And if your company was relying on you to determine which Engine Type to purchase during the next business upswing, your method of defining productivity would in fact do the opposite -- it would identify the least productive as the most productive, because of the inclusion of statistically irrelevant information which does not, in fact, provide an accurate measure of productivity.
You would give your company exactly the wrong information because your view of productivity is not, in fact, the accepted method of doing such analysis, for the reasons identified here, and in nearly every textbook on the subject.
gabe wrote: Not to take you to task on a subject of which you know more than I, but the GM&O beat them cold? How was the GM&O in competition with the C&IM?The Wabash/N&W served at Taylorville, the IC at Divernon, the IC at Havahna, the CNW at Athens, you name it at Peoria.Admittedly, the GM&O served the C&IM's location of Springfield, but the C&IM did ship coal to Springfield--or did it before my time?Did the GM&O serve Peoria?Oh, wait a minute, I am forgetting the old GM&O line that cut across the state aren't I but is no longer in existence. Was that the souce of the competition?Once again, I am not disagreeing with you, I am just confused how this could have been the case.Gabe
Well, feel free to disagree with me.
The GM&O did have a line into E. Peoria. It left the Chicago-St.Louis main somewhere north of Springfield. But that particular line didn't factor into this situation.
The C&IM lived by hauling Illinois coal for Commonwealth Edison to burn. Some coal went to a generating station just south of Pekin, but most of it went to a river transfer facility at Havana where it was loaded into barges and taken to Chicago area generating stations. In the early sixties this traffic consisted of two solid trains a day to Havana.
The GM&O established unit train service to Chicago and the rail/barge movement was not competitive. I don't believe the GM&O loads came from the same mine. ComEd built a mine mouth generating station at Kincaid - and IIRC, that was where most (if not all) the C&IM's coal was from. ComEd didn't need the railroad anymore and put it up for sale.
In an interesting development, the Illinois & Midland now hauls Powder River coal to that Kincaid station - since its use of Illinois coal is restricted if not entirely prohibited.
greyhounds wrote: gabe wrote: Not to take you to task on a subject of which you know more than I, but the GM&O beat them cold? How was the GM&O in competition with the C&IM?The Wabash/N&W served at Taylorville, the IC at Divernon, the IC at Havahna, the CNW at Athens, you name it at Peoria.Admittedly, the GM&O served the C&IM's location of Springfield, but the C&IM did ship coal to Springfield--or did it before my time?Did the GM&O serve Peoria?Oh, wait a minute, I am forgetting the old GM&O line that cut across the state aren't I but is no longer in existence. Was that the souce of the competition?Once again, I am not disagreeing with you, I am just confused how this could have been the case.GabeWell, feel free to disagree with me. The GM&O did have a line into E. Peoria. It left the Chicago-St.Louis main somewhere north of Springfield. But that particular line didn't factor into this situation.The C&IM lived by hauling Illinois coal for Commonwealth Edison to burn. Some coal went to a generating station just south of Pekin, but most of it went to a river transfer facility at Havana where it was loaded into barges and taken to Chicago area generating stations. In the early sixties this traffic consisted of two solid trains a day to Havana.The GM&O established unit train service to Chicago and the rail/barge movement was not competitive. I don't believe the GM&O loads came from the same mine. ComEd built a mine mouth generating station at Kincaid - and IIRC, that was where most (if not all) the C&IM's coal was from. ComEd didn't need the railroad anymore and put it up for sale.In an interesting development, the Illinois & Midland now hauls Powder River coal to that Kincaid station - since its use of Illinois coal is restricted if not entirely prohibited.
Thanks, if you ever find out where the GM&O coal originated, I would be interested.
I am fairly familiar with the south end of C&IM operations. In the last ten times I have visited that area, I have always found a UP PRB coal train at Kincaid. I like this area, because you can still catch locals with actual I&M power in addition to IC coal trains at Divernon and the afore-mentioned UP train. Also, the last time I checked things out--two years ago--I&M was rehabing the east end of this line where it connects to NS, which really has me thinking.
My Dad has reported an occassional south bound loaded NS coal train. I am wondering if it could originate on the I&M at Taylorville. Hopefully, I can go explore my old stomping grounds again soon and solve this mystery.
It seems like the North end is usually pretty busy too, with BNSF coal, but I have only visited it once. I seem to remember you saying Havahna is now served by UP in the loading facility? Sounds like the rumors of the C&IM's death have been greatly exagerated. But, I think I would still rather see the C&IM/I&M locals.
MichaelSol wrote: JonathanS wrote: As a manager in a manufacturing concern I can say with assurance than for the purposes being discussed here the on stream factor is irrelevant for these calculations. Any capital tool is eating up resources continuously. As long as it is on the books it is taxed, it is depreciated (and I am not talking IRS depreciation I am talking internal corporate depreciation), it requires insurance, and it must receive some level of maintenance, supervision, and security. It does not matter if a locomotive is out on the road earning its keep, in the roundhouse having its boiler washed, or in the shops getting a class 3 overhaul. The locomotive is on the books and it is considered by management, the government, and the stockholders as available and usable. Thus in 1945 the 607,809,000 TM being moved by 1,666,000 lb TE yields 365 TM/lb TE while in 1956 354,689,000 being moved by 816,000 lb TE yields 435 Ton Mile per pound Tractive Effort. Management improved productivity using this yardstick.If I would go to my management and make the case that based on the numbers given here that steam was the better choice because during the hours it is operational it is more productive than diesel and just ignore that it is off line a larger part of each day than are diesels, then I would very quickly be looking for employment elsewhere. The amount of output per month or year per amount of input is what counts.This is not how you do a productivity study if your company expects accurate results. In this instance, suppose you had 50 units of Engine Type A, and 30 Units of Engine Type B. At current production levels, you do not need all of the units, and somebody assigns use simply based on engine numbers. As it turns out, the assignment system engages 25 of Engine Type B and and 20 of Engine Tpe A. As it also turns out, the 20 of Engine Type A equals or exceeds the output of the 25 of Engine Type B.By your method, Engine Type A would be the least productive engine type because 50 of them are not nearly as productive as 30 of Engine Type B, because you are assigning the output of 20 to the 50, and of 25 to the 30. When you do that, you will get the wrong answer every day of the week.Yet Engine Type A is in fact a better machine if you analyzed by a machine basis, rather than a fleet basis. This is very similar to the statistical error identified by Brown in his critique of fleet-based comparisons.And if your company was relying on you to determine which Engine Type to purchase during the next business upswing, your method of defining productivity would in fact do the opposite -- it would identify the least productive as the most productive, because of the inclusion of statistically irrelevant information which does not, in fact, provide an accurate measure of productivity.You would give your company exactly the wrong information because your view of productivity is not, in fact, the accepted method of doing such analysis, for the reasons identified here, and in nearly every textbook on the subject.
What texts are you citing? Every recent one I have studied wants total maximization not maximization during uptime only. As an international corporation we are very successfull because we maximize our assets on a 1440 minute day. Contrary to what you are espousing, operating our business in the manner I have described has greatly increased our profitibility as compared to operating machinery that could produce more per hour but could not operate 24/7/365. We operated that way 20+ years ago, and we would not be able to compete today if we still operted in that mindset.
For the operating units for which I have responsibility I must account daily for each minute any machine is not producing product. It doesn't matter whether the reason is scheduled maintenance, a breakdown, or someone forgot to order raw materials. If the asset is not producing, then for that time it is a net drain on the income statement and my boss and his boss wants to know when it will back on line. Any business that does not understand this concept is going to be left behind by competitors who do understand. Total utilization of assets is why the successful trucking outfits have gone to driving teams to keep the asset (rig) on the road earning its keep. It is also why some of the innovative trucking outfits have embraced TOFC and COFC as eagerly as they have. By sending one rig from Seattle to Chicago and placing the remaining 20 trailers (or containers) making the same trip on BN and having the driver(s) of the one rig make all the deliveries and pick ups in Chicago, the trucking company gets the productivity of 21 tractors and crews out of just one. It does not matter if that one tractor is the most powerful one on the road, the asset available is being continuously utilized and thereby profitibility is maximized. The competing trucking company that sends 21 driving teams to perform the same deliveries will soon be out of business.
CSX has lost our business, and has lost many other customers in this area in the last 15 years because they seem to have forgotten that the business they are in is providing transportation. They seem to believe (at least the officials with which I interact) that the business CSX is in is running trains. If you have a train to move they are happy to oblige. If you need a delivery of one car every day don't bother them, they are not interested. And as a result of this mindset the rail traffic in this area is a small shadow of what it was 20 years ago. They have locomotives sitting in the yard doing nothing but waiting on the next unit coal train to deliver to a power plant. That same locomotive could during that idle time be out on the road collecting and delivering the local traffic that CSX is currently distaining. Could CSX be more profitable by using the existing locomotives for more hours each day? Or should they continue the current operating philosophy and trade in each of the existing locomotives for some of the 6000 HP brutes that GE and EMD have cataloged becuse then each locomotive could haul more cars as you seem to recommend? CSX is maximizing the length of its trains and it losing business because of that idea. That is not a healthy business model.
JonathanS wrote:What texts are you citing? Every recent one I have studied wants total maximization not maximization during uptime only. As an international corporation we are very successfull because we maximize our assets on a 1440 minute day. Contrary to what you are espousing, operating our business in the manner I have described has greatly increased our profitibility as compared to operating machinery that could produce more per hour but could not operate 24/7/365. We operated that way 20+ years ago, and we would not be able to compete today if we still operted in that mindset.
You've never been through a business cycle then.
The example cited earlier, the C&IM, is an interesting case example. While greyhounds considered it "bombast and exageration" to compare locomotive utilization at the top of a business cycle with utilization at the bottom of a business cycle, and that only "fantasy railroads" have business cycles (!!), I think that's exactly why the C&IM is a good example -- of both business cycles and greyhounds' usual approach to any discussion.
And your odd example of maintaining production efficiency by reducing down time is a false analogy, because it substitutes mechanical productivity for strategic economic decision making.
And that is why my example of Engine Type A and Engine Type B is, and you failed to grasp it, a business cycle example -- because the C&IM was responding to a business cycle -- not a straight production efficiency cycle, and why, if you use your methodology, you will arrive at the wrong result regarding large capital investment decisions that would otherwise be unnecessary.
This is also why 28 steam locomotives hauling 608,000,000 ton miles in 1945 is entirely relevant to the absurd idea that they needed 30 steam locomotives in 1955 to haul 364,000,000 ton miles. The railroad was at the bottom of a business cycle. Greyhounds claims they weren't stupid. Then in that case, they were not operating 30 steam locomotives to haul half the freight they hauled ten years previously.
If they were smart, they were actually operating 16 steam engines, most likely, unless they just wanted to spend thousands of unecessary dollars on unneeded engine crews. Same thing happened during the Great Depression. Thousands of steam locomotives went into storage during that part of the business cycle, fortunately, as they were able to come out of storage to meet the sudden enormous demands of WWII.
And with Steam, that was possible. By and large, the Steam engine fleet in the United States was always paid for. There was no economic compulsion to sell them or turn them back to the lessor or trust certificate holder during downturns in a business cycle.
And Railroads knew from experience the business cycle would change. They always do.
Your methodology might work for higher turnover equipment, but it would always work in reverse during broad business cycles -- compelling the retirement of equipment to maintain artificial standards of productivity, at the sacrifice of being able to respond quickly -- and cheaply -- to upturns in the business cycle.
And that was distinctive about Steam. Because of the long service life and the concomitant ability to purchase outright, "productivity" was well served by being able to put these machines in and out of service as business required -- without massive sudden outlays of capital followed by substantial writedowns for early and unnecessary retirements. The road Diesel-electric, because of the relatively short economic service life, and the concomitant requirement of financing, exacerbated the effects of business cycles by working in the opposite direction.
JonathanS wrote: The locomotive is on the books and it is considered by management, the government, and the stockholders as available and usable. Thus in 1945 the 607,809,000 TM being moved by 1,666,000 lb TE yields 365 TM/lb TE while in 1956 354,689,000 being moved by 816,000 lb TE yields 435 Ton Mile per pound Tractive Effort. Management improved productivity using this yardstick. If I would go to my management and make the case that based on the numbers given here that steam was the better choice because during the hours it is operational it is more productive than diesel and just ignore that it is off line a larger part of each day than are diesels, then I would very quickly be looking for employment elsewhere. The amount of output per month or year per amount of input is what counts.
The 11 diesel locomotives in 1956 represented an investment of approximately $1.32 million using the analogous figures of my Post of 5/19, whereas the Steam fleet of 28 locomotives cost, on a comparable basis, $1.34 million. To purchase the same economic service life, the dieselization would ultimately cost, if the units were rebuilt and capitalized to achieve the same economic service life as the Steam, $8.3 million.
Using your methodology (again, to avoid endless argument and not because I agree that it is accurate), the total acquisition cost of the ability to haul 365NTM/lb for 30 years of Steam tractive effort is about $1.00. The total acquisition cost of the ability to haul 435 NTM/lb for 30 years of Diesel-electric tractive effort is about $10.00.
The 20% increase in productivity comes with an acquisition penalty cost of 900%. This is like buying a Cadillac to haul pig carcasses.
This is partly what Brown was getting at in his paper. Everyone was looking at the 20% and how much that would save. No one had actually determined the cost of acquiring that 20%, or how much cheaper it was simply to buy more lbs of tractive effort outright to achieve higher production, rather than purchase the much higher priced method of producing tractive effort.
This is why I am skeptical of your claim to have done productivity analysis. Productivity analysis is done with economic objectives and goals in mind, and your error above, suggesting that the idea that a purely mechanical assessment of productivity automatically generates the best financial result, cannot be valid without looking at the financial cost -- which you did not do.
As I have stated earlier, reliance on your approach will generate the wrong answer every day of the week.
And it did here.
And this is certainly not the entire story. Brown details the specific cost savings involved in the transition to Dieselization --and some added costs as well. But, his contribution to the analysis was the clear identification of the costs of acquisition -- and whether these were incurred by initial cost, subsequent rebuilding and capitalization or by replacement and capitalization. And that was one of Brown's points -- maintenance costs did indeed look better for the Diesel electric if the costs of rebuildng were capitalized rather than treated as a legitimate cost of operating the equipment. And those were the figures that were advertised by EMD, along with the projected 20 year life span. And using those figures and the 20 year life span -- the numbers worked strongly for Dieselization.
But if the rebuild was treated as a cost -- then maintenance was substantially higher. And either way, the numbers didn't work so well when the railroads realized that 14 years was about as good as it was going to be for the life span of a road diesel. And this was only officially recognized in 1957, through the analysis of the same data Brown was using, and which confirmed what Brown was seeing. Brown was by no means off on his own. The rail industry clamored for a reduction in the depreciation allowed by the IRS from the 20 year to the 14 year figure in 1957. Using more sophisticated "Iowa Curve" analysis, the depreciation schedule was again revised, to 8 years, at the railroads' request. In essence, this recognized that Brown was exactly right.
And for anyone who has actually ever done a business analysis, or plan, the change in a key econometric figure from 20 years to 8 years will produce an enormous difference in the outcome, and the outcome will be substantially negative on both the income statement and the balance sheet compared to the analysis using 20 years.
In the case of using the capitalization method of rebuilding diesel-electric motive power, total overall capitalization had to be considered for both forms of motive power to achieve comparability with the historic life span of Steam. And that hadn't been done until Brown did it, and it wasn't because Brown was looking to any agenda, but because by 1957 there had accumulated a good data record upon which to finally make such an assessment.
MichaelSol wrote:You've never been through a business cycle then. And Railroads knew from experience the business cycle would change. They always do.Your methodology might work for higher turnover equipment, but it would always work in reverse during broad business cycles -- compelling the retirement of equipment to maintain artificial standards of productivity, at the sacrifice of being able to respond quickly -- and cheaply -- to upturns in the business cycle.
In my 35+ year (so far) career I have been through more business cycles than I care to think about. But by using the methodology you are distaining, we are able to beat our Chinese competitors on price in most markets in the world, as well as producing at far higher quality than they are currently able to deliver. Yes by using this philosophy you do lose flexibility for product demand variations, but that is what we use warehousing and toll manufacturers for.
Providing that same flexibility to the rails is why the locomotive lease companies exist. You own enough equipment to produce what you need for the majority of the cycle, be it widgets or ton-miles, and go outside to tide you over the peak demands. That way you do not have to tie up valuable cash in equipment that only works part time. Such arrangements are not new. Bangor & Aroostock and the PRR had an arrangement where locomotives spent specific months on each road. Thus the Maine potato rush had sufficient motive power, and Pennsy had additional TE when there was ore to move out of Cleveland. That way neither road owned an asset that sat around for months doing nothing productive. Even back in the steam days there was a fair amount of locomotive leasing to cover the grain harvests. There are many other examples of locomotives, freight cars and even passenger cars having been set up on an annual or even weekly cycle between different railroads to maximize utility.
JonathanS wrote: Providing that same flexibility to the rails is why the locomotive lease companies exist. You own enough equipment to produce what you need for the majority of the cycle, be it widgets or ton-miles, and go outside to tide you over the peak demands. That way you do not have to tie up valuable cash in equipment that only works part time. Such arrangements are not new. Bangor & Aroostock and the PRR had an arrangement where locomotives spent specific months on each road. Thus the Maine potato rush had sufficient motive power, and Pennsy had additional TE when there was ore to move out of Cleveland. That way neither road owned an asset that sat around for months doing nothing productive. Even back in the steam days there was a fair amount of locomotive leasing to cover the grain harvests. There are many other examples of locomotives, freight cars and even passenger cars having been set up on an annual or even weekly cycle between different railroads to maximize utility.
This is an operating strategy that has nothing to do with any distinction between steam and diesel that cannot be an advantage to one or the other. Nor does a business cycle have much to do with the potato harvest.
I don't mean to sound rude, but I am just not seeing an analysis here -- only throwing up yet a different argument at each turn without confronting the fundamental problem of the conversion of long-life, low cost equipment for the somewhat higher productivity gained but only by purchasing expensive, short-lived equipment requiring substantialy higher capital investment for each unit of production, coupled with ongoing financing costs -- all of which effectively eliminated a formerly low-cost reserve capacity at each business downturn because of the much higher costs of maintaining, after dieselization, any kind of reserve capacity at a point in time when any company could least afford to incur ongoing high financing charges -- the bottom of a business cycle.
The Banks won, I don't think the railroads did.
At the same time, railroads for the first time had a compelling financial incentive to underpower their road fleets because it was too expensive to be caught with unused horsepower. It was cheaper to always be behind the curve, rather than to pay an uncompensated financial premium -- a penalty almost -- to be ahead of the curve. Average train speeds have been falling ever since.
We talk about single engine trains. The UP seems to be already doing it. I witnessed a very powerful desiel running hard the other day by itself towing autoracks. I lost count after 20 of them.
I feel that the SD7 or similar engines develop tractive effort sufficient to start trains and have more wheels to spread the weight on lighter railroads.
I think also that we have been de-rating or casterating engines for years now we need to get back to more horsepower more TE. They may find it cheaper to start, move and mantain heavier trains that way.
But what do I know, I only need to burn 8 gallons an hour on a fat CAT instead of winding out a weedeater at 20+gph on the same grade.
JonathanS wrote: Or should they continue the current operating philosophy and trade in each of the existing locomotives for some of the 6000 HP brutes that GE and EMD have cataloged becuse then each locomotive could haul more cars as you seem to recommend? CSX is maximizing the length of its trains and it losing business because of that idea. That is not a healthy business model.
I tend to agree with this point of view -- but from the perspective that a large single unit locomotive would haul a somewhat shorter train than two or three smaller hp units. The advantage being that the marginal benefit from the increase in tonnage by adding units is small compared to the mechanical cost and complexity of adding each additional locomotive. A person could build an interesting model to predict the specific effect on costs. I suspect, for instance, that while higher horsepower units have shorter economic service lives, say at 6000 hp, that there may be a positive trade-off against the costs of operating two equivalent units -- say SD40-2s -- half the moving parts, better statistical availability of one over two, etc..
I was with the USDA in R&D at the point in time when the FAA and USDA were locked in a relatively furious statistical battle over whether the nation's air tanker fleet should be required to have more than one engine per aircraft -- the popular airtanker of the time being the maneuverable little single engine WWII TBM bomber. The FAA was arguing that more engines meant more safety. They were tangling with Boeing over the same issue on trans-oceanic planes -- Boeing arguing that a two engine design was statistically safer; FAA commanding four engines.
Some USDA statisticians with long familiarity with the TBM (and statistics) were pointing out that the increase in key components with increasing engines was logarithmic, and that with each additional engine, the probability of catastrophic failure increased, not decreased. Too, when a TBM did go down, it was so light it didn't really crash, it bounced. Put it in all the weight and infrastructure for a two or more engine plane, and then, if it went down, you really had a crash. It was quite a battle. The TBM lost. There was an unshakeable conviction that more units meant better reliability. In subsequent years, as the nation's airtanker fleet converted to multi-engine aircraft, the number of pilot deaths due to aircraft losses increased.
Did USDA go back to the TBMs? No it was too late, they were all scrapped, and the redesign and production costs to start from scratch were just too daunting.
Had an interesting comment with one of the railroad mechanical engineers I worked with when I first became familiar with the Brown study. I was discussing the mechanical complexity of the diesel vs steam vs straight electric, and was marvelling that anyone could think that so many moving parts represented in the typical diesel engine could mean anything but expensive maintenance costs. He commented that it wasn't just the number of moving parts. There was a key physics problem involved.
I had to note, he remarked, that the typical locomotive is essentially beat up all day long. Buffeting forces from start to finish. His feeling as to the longevity of steam related to those buffeting forces and Newton's First Law. "Everything that happens to a steam engine," he noted, "is parallel to the direction of piston travel. Doesn't affect the piston or the cylinders much. Everything that happens to a diesel is perpendicular to the direction of the piston travel in the cylinder. The stress is taken entirely by the cylinder walls and the piston rings. It's not just the moving parts that fail, its the compression that also fails long before it begins to do so with Steam."
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy Siding wrote: Michael- your analogy about Avengers versus B-17's is intersting, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions. I've known a few guys who flew fighters in the pacific in WW II. They'd much rather have had P-38's, with two engines, than single engine P-51's, even though the Mustangs were better fighting machines. Lose an engine on a Lighting andyou were limping home. Lose an engine on a Mustang, and you were in the drink. I'd venture to say that having one out of two SD40-2's conk out is not the same as having one of one 6000 hp units conk out.
Oh, it was a statisticians argument -- and conventional wisdoms often run differently. FAA "felt" the same way, even though the statistics said the opposite. You now fly in a two-engine 777 rather than a four-engine because Boeing had better statisticians than the USDA and FAA and finally proved the point.
And, as I mentioned, the death rate increased. I knew three TBM pilots that walked away from their crashes. I saw five multi-engine planes take off and never return -- their pilots killed. I'd been on two of the planes from testing -- knew them well. Certified them for service pursuant to the "FAA Standards". Knew the pilots. One was a B-17 which, notwithstanding its four engines, was the worst plane for the airtanker service. FAA thought those four engines were the best thing since sliced baloney until they started killing people right and left. The best plane? By far the P2V Neptune. Largest piston engines ever put on an aircraft -- and outboard auxilliary jets. It was hugely redundant. It was vastly overbuilt -- not a commercially viable airframe, but a beautiful, powerful, graceful aircraft.
Saw a B-17 and P2V go out, one after another, bad canyon situation, fire, crowning, smoke, loss of lift, the B17 went in, all killed; the P2V following behind could power out. When it went into the smoke, it was following the B-17; when it came out, it was alone in the clear blue sky. They knew the worst had happened.
When it landed, we could see it had been a close call; the side of the plane was scratched and dented, some windows broken. Part of a tree was stuck in the wing, Ponderosa Pine, which meant he was just pulling over the ridge; barely making it. We found pine cones inside the fuselage. Scorch marks underneath. The movie "Always" with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus wasn't all that far fetched ... and that was a P2v I had static tested.
If the SD40-2 fails, can the remaining one get it in? Is it statistically more likely to happen that one of two engines will fail than one? Well, those are interesting questions, but I don't think the answer is as intuitive as it seems.
MichaelSol wrote:I was with the USDA in R&D at the point in time when the FAA and USDA were locked in a relatively furious statistical battle over whether the nation's air tanker fleet should be required to have more than one engine per aircraft -- the popular airtanker of the time being the maneuverable little single engine WWII TBM bomber. The FAA was arguing that more engines meant more safety. They were tangling with Boeing over the same issue on trans-oceanic planes -- Boeing arguing that a two engine design was statistically safer; FAA commanding four engines.
There's a along standing debate in the general aviation community about the relative safety of single engine versus multi-engine aircraft - and the safety record is typically worse for the multi-engine aircraft. One simple reason is that most twins need both engines running to keep flying well. A more subtle reason is that the asymmetric thrust from an engine out on a twin can lead to the plane going out of control, where in a single you just land the darned thing.
I've a story about the GE side of getting approval for extended two engine flight over water - jokes about the acronym 'ETOPS' standing for 'Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim'. Part of the reluctance on the FAA's part in approving extended twin operation over water was due to the institutional memory of the poor reliability of piston engines.
There are some parallels being the disappearance of the steam locomtive and of disappearance of large piston engined aircraft. One is that spare parts were increasingly hard to come by (a big factor in N&W dieselizing) and that fuel was increasingly hard to find.
Had an interesting comment with one of the railroad mechanical engineers I worked with when I first became familiar with the Brown study. I was discussing the mechanical complexity of the diesel vs steam vs straight electric, and was marvelling that anyone could think that so many moving parts represented in the typical diesel engine could mean anything but expensive maintenance costs. He commented that it wasn't just the number of moving parts. There was a key physics problem involved.I had to note, he remarked, that the typical locomotive is essentially beat up all day long. Buffeting forces from start to finish. His feeling as to the longevity of steam related to those buffeting forces and Newton's First Law. "Everything that happens to a steam engine," he noted, "is parallel to the direction of piston travel. Doesn't affect the piston or the cylinders much. Everything that happens to a diesel is perpendicular to the direction of the piston travel in the cylinder. The stress is taken entirely by the cylinder walls and the piston rings. It's not just the moving parts that fail, its the compression that also fails long before it begins to do so with Steam."
Interesting point - though the compression is affected by moving parts. Also puts pretty much puts the kibosh on using flywheels in frieght locomotives (the article on flywheels in the May 19, 2007 issue of Science News highlights the potential use of flywheels in locomotives).
One of the things that stood out in Robert LaMassena's (spelling may need correction) article in the June 1968 issue of Trains was that diesel locomotives offered full horsepower output at relatively low speeds, while the steam locomotive's horsepower typically peaked around 45 mph. He did mention that only a few railroads truly understood how to best utilize steam, stating that the UP was one of the few. As a consequence, the UP ran the Big Boys up until 1958, which was a year or two after most other railroads had stopped running steam. Similarly, the NKP Berkshires performed well in hauling fast freight until '58 or '59.
One of the few modern steam locomotives designed for low-speed operation were the N&W Y-6's and they produced about the same amount of tractive effort as a Big Boy with a boiler that was the same size as the boiler on most Northerns.
Hi all
I don't see any diesels matching the speed and power of the steamers on a regular basis,or the romance or even the living machine part.
Diesels have instant availability and a couple of other useful innovations like Multie control but they are not really better than steam not when the local train time table got adjusted by ten minutes backwards on the introduction of diesels then only regained another two on the introduction of electrics.
STEAM IS KING for good reason
regards John
Regarding H.F. Brown and his seminal paper "The Economic Results of Diesel-electric Motive Power on the Railways of the United States of America," I was interested to see, while working on an unrelated project, that the Institution of Mechanical Engineers does in fact have a link -- requires registration and purchase -- of the original article on-line.
This is quite a resource for engineering history that relates to railroading, as it was for nearly a century and a half "the" journal for publishing research in all phases of mechanical engineering, and especially including railroading. Below are just a few articles noted in the two or three issues around Brown's publication date:
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1847-1996
Economic results of diesel electric motive power on the railways of the United States of America*
The economics of large diesel engines for electrical power generation
Some aspects of railway electrification
Some design problems arising in the development of very large high-speed turbines
Operating characteristics of compound engine schemes for traction purposes based on opposed piston two-stroke engines and differential gearing
Some speculations on the future of railway mechanical engineering
Method of predicting some aspects of performance of a diesel engine using a digital computer
The engineer, life and diesel engines
Modern aids in the design of railway bogies
The diesel engine in association with the gas turbine
The development of multi‐fuel engines
Dynamic loads on the gears of electric traction motors passing over a rail joint
The high‐speed heavy‐duty diesel engine, its development, design and application
The future of the high‐speed reciprocating internal‐combustion engine
You mean there's more than one difference between the two technologies?
I like these threads because I wasn't around during steam and it's neat to hear proponents discuss their attributes.
Dan
....Diesel electric engines head and shoulders above steam for doing the job in today's world.
I don't see any major Corp. reaching back for any kind of steam for moving RR cars across this country of ours to do today's commerce.
Just my observation. No expert...Just noting what's going on now.
Quentin
This thing about requiring multiple locomotives to protect a train interests me.
When Inspector General Meade came out with a report talking about how Amtrak could have big cost savings on the long-distance trains by removing diners, sleepers, baggage cars, and the second locomotive, one of the reactions from a colleague in the rail advocacy community was "power Amtrak trains with one locomotive?" There are arguments to be made pro and con about Amtrak long-distance train consists and the popularity or profitability of sleeper service, but the idea of shortening long distance trains and powering them with a single P42 seemed to create a kind of disquiet as crossing the Atlantic on a single-engine plane.
My understanding is that your typical coal unit train operated with 4 SD-40's, 3 SD-70MAC's or 2 SD-90's -- in other words 4 3000 HP units, 3 4000 HP units, or 2 6000 HP units. Is anyone contemplating running major, heavy, mainline trains with a single unit? I am even thinking that 2 6000 HP units is problematic and part of why the 6000 HP unit hasn't really caught on. 2 4000 HP units may be able to limp to the next siding, but if you lose one of two 6000 HP units, you are pretty much stuck, and that is why I believe unit reduction has stalled at the 4000 HP unit level.
As to the 4-engine, 2-engine, 1-engine airplane argument, I can understand where a 1-engine airplane can be actually safer in a general-aviation or perhaps forest-fire tanker role. If your 1-engine plane has a slow enough stall speed that you can safely pancake it into a pasture or a field of brush, a 1-engine plane has all kinds of safety advantages relative to a 2-engine plane that handles badly or doesn't have enough power on 1-engine. The safety of 2-engine planes is not a given without the crew training to operate them both with 1 or 2 engines turning.
But while Boeing got ocean certification for the 2-engine 777, does anyone seriously contemplate a 1-engine plane for ocean crossing of any kind, apart from sport, military, or record-setting flights? Also, is Amtrak that bad in keeping their P42's running that a 1-locomotive long-distance train is a disaster waiting to happen?
As far as reliability and availability, 1-locomotive operation with steam was considered the norm apart from helper districts and cases of double heading long trains. While a steam engine needs care and feeding of the fire and boiler and lube points, etc., were steam engines ever prone to sudden failures where "oops, this engine won't load, I guess we are stuck and need a tow"?
Diesels are sufficiently complex that I imagine that they can just fail out on the road -- just plain quit or not load up on account of a moth getting in a relay or something. Does a steamer, apart from a boiler explosion, have a failure mode where you dispatch one and then have a train get stuck somewhere out in a cornfield?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
.....Rod bushing burnup...? Or worse, total rod journal / bush failure.
An old friend, who worked for the J, told me an old story when the BN brought it's first WCB train in to Eola with three U30C's. The J huales it out with ONE SD38. The Trainmaster on duty was astounded.
Three was the BN standard (SD40-2's or U30C/C30-7's) and the J regularilary (Hillibilly spellcheck?)hauled it out with two, with an extra load of manifest!. On a standard freight, as well. I've been in the cab, SWEET!!!Now they use three SD38's to get it out. HHMMMM? Theyust be getting old, uh. The J SD's could haul a 150 car train alone back in the day. Not real fast, but they weren't concerned about speed then. Makes ya' wonder, thought. I still remember two J's for three BN SD40/U/C30's, and that was being nice to the the crews so they could have short hood forward. One SD38 on a 110 coal plus a 20 30 car P/U was a sound to behold!!
Paul Milenkovic wrote: Diesels are sufficiently complex that I imagine that they can just fail out on the road -- just plain quit or not load up on account of a moth getting in a relay or something. Does a steamer, apart from a boiler explosion, have a failure mode where you dispatch one and then have a train get stuck somewhere out in a cornfield?
Sure. Bearings can run hot, springs break, flues can leak, wheels and rods can break - there are lots of things that can go wrong with steamers. There are some wonderful accounts of the work entailed in keeping them together and running in Brian Fawcett's "Railways of the Andes." Fawcett worked in the Mechanical Department of the Central of Peru and his book is full of wonderful anecdotes - including the priceless habit firemen had of using cow manure to stop leaking flues. There's a lot that can go wrong with steam short of a crown sheet failure, but I'll leave it to someone with the statistics to make the better/worse case.
http://mprailway.blogspot.com
"The first transition era - wood to steel!"
I wonder if the cost of a road failure isn't higher today than back in the steam days because of the physical nature of railroading. Far fewer people around, far fewer locomotives sitting around - or even out working now. Then, there was a lot of double track ABS that's now single track. Maybe the time it takes to work around a road failure is higher these days.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I understand the argument for the Diesels being more expensive at first, but I still can't get past the sheer number of people needed or the phsyical plant needed to keep steam running. The exspense of bringing water to the desert on the ATSF, the number of roundhouses, enginehouses, water towers, sand houses, fuel stations, etc., PLus all the people needed to run these facilities.
Back when wages were 2 dollars an hour the railroad could absorb the payroll, today there is just no way. A steam locomotive reguires a fireman and an engineer, today just an engineer, soon that may just be a computer. While the number of enignes, the reliablity concerns, and so forth are compelling arguments of whether the railroads went to fast into a new unproven technology is interesting, from the simple stand point of number of people and facilities needed, today out weighs any probable resurgence of steam. The railroads want to cut staff as this is the leading exspense today as in every other bussiness, steam would have given way to diesel sooner rather than later.
Micheal Sol, as always your expertise in this matter and your unmatched research in this matter is truely refreshing and a joy to read and ponder. It does seem the railroads had a similar technology lust that is seen even today. If its new it must be better, while all bussiness sense seems to be overlooked. It does seem the railroads were a little to eager to get rid of the steam engine simply because the diesel had fewer requirements in man power.
The railroad are looking at new technology now that will replace the enigneer and conductor, will this technology be fool proof, not likely! But will it be cheaper in the long run, probably, but the upfront costs seem to be staggering.
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