Further to my previous comments, I’ve done more light analysis on the train
sheets. It appears that the first steam locomotives replaced by diesel were
the mikado, heavy pacifics and hudsons. Basically the heavier mainline power
went first.
The engines that lasted to end of steam May 1960 were the light pacifics (G1,
G2 and G5 classes) and the ever present D10s handling the light freight.
If you are modelling the era and wanted to make the choice between one or two
steam engines then the first choice should be the D10. You can’t go wrong.
The second choice would be a G5 or G2.
To complete the story, the diesels that replaced the D10 and light pacifics in
May 1960 were Alco and GMD switchers.
Jeff
From: cpha-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cpha-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ;
Jeff Pinchbeck (Redacted sender "jpinchbeck" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2021 11:22 AM
To: cpha@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [cpha] Re: 1950s transition modelling
I’m currently digitizing thousands of train time sheets (aka. dispatcher
sheets). The dates and locations are a bit all over the place but the core of
the collection is Jan 1956 to end of Dec 1960. It’s interesting to see that at
the start of 1956 around 75-80% of trains were led by steam engines and by
mid-1959 that number was maybe one train a day at best. When 1960 rolled along
dieselization was complete.
A similar retirement process went through with the passenger car fleet. There
were well over a thousand passenger cars retired and scrapped in that time
period. Remaining cars were refurbished and modernized. And, of course, there
were acquisitions of new equipment too.
The only other time period that might be similar is the mid to late 1930s. In
that time period nearly all old smaller steam engines were replaced and older
wood passenger cars were scrapped and retired.
Jeff
