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
