Re: steam maintenance vs diesel
Author: mook
Date: 08-18-2008 - 16:50
Steam locomotives, BTW, run just fine on oil in addition to coal. Better in most cases. Most mainline steam these days runs on diesel since that's what you can get in a tanker truck anywhere when it comes time to refuel.
I suspect that, in the 1940's and 50's, the real situation was stacked in favor of diesels for a number of reasons, resulting in wholesale abandonment of both steam and electrics. Let's see:
1) diesel fuel was cheap (in the US, not in Europe).
2) diesel locomotive production was ramping up with STANDARD models that differed from RR to RR only in external details, so significant first-cost reductions were occurring that continued into the 1960's.
3) steam locomotives might have been less expensive per unit, but not by much, and the biggest problem was there there was no standardization so the RR needed the ability to make parts instead of buying them once the original mfr moved on. Diesels were like cars - fix them with off the shelf parts. More expensive per part, perhaps, but much less expensive delivered because it takes less time to pull a part and install a new one than to fix the old one. "Modular" controls in the late 1960's and 1970's did the same thing to the electrical side of diesels, which was one of their weak points early on.
4) steam locomotives were much more picky about service on the road, fueling infrastructure, and WATER. All that stuff took people to manage and money to set up and maintain. Diesels just ran in between fuel/service stops at major terminals, and most of those little water/fuel/oil-around stops disappeared along with the jobs tied to them. Think productivity: ton-miles per employee went way up. The drop in labor cost more than paid for the higher first cost (for a while) and maintenance (early models) for diesels.
I really think the last point is what made it for diesels - you could use the same locos systemwide, anywhere, and not have to worry about whether the water was OK over there, or the helpers were available over here, or even whether the engineers on this district knew how to run those locos. With proper training, any engineer could run any locomotive, especially if the purchasing dept stuck to one brand. The low-speed operating characteristics of diesels were much better than steam under heavy load (as were electrics, but if you didn't have a ton of traffic the electric system cost too much to install and maintain).
Finally, after WW2 the existing steam and electrics were just plain worn out. Most needed replacement, now, and the diesel makers could ramp up production quickly using standard parts which the steam makers either couldn't or didn't want to do (seeing the writing on the wall?).
With the kind of operations we see today, like run-through power over multiple railroads and distributed power (which is more than just helpers), I just don't see steam coming back. In limited situations, probably with govt help for some larger public purpose, some of the things discussed above might bring electrics back in a modern (high-voltage) form, but diesels in some form (interesting how gensets in the last couple of years seem to have crushed hybrids in the clean-switcher market) will still rule most operations. Steam for the foreseeable future (as long as diesel fuel is still available at anything resembling a reasonable price) will remain a nostalgia/tourist operation.