You can continue the steam vs diesel debate until hell freezes over and
never come to a conclusion. There are as many pro arguments as there are con
arguments. When you compare brand new diesels with 50 year old steam
locomotives and antiquated facilities it is easy to predict who will win
out.
When you compare them on equal footing it is a lot more difficult. When they
compared 1940's era steam with 1950's era diesels the diesels often didn't
come out so well. This is one reason many railroads ran steam as long as
they did, they finally had no choice but to dieselize when parts became
harder and harder to get. When they dieselized in China and India it was
more on the basis of politics than economics. Neither wanted to be seen as a
"backward" country. When they compared steam and diesel in South Africa in
the 1980's steam won, but they decided to dieselize anyway based on
politics. They never bought any more diesels to do it, they just abandoned
enough trackage to accomplish their goal.
Diesels have one advantage over steam, they develop a lot of tractive effort
in the 0 to 1 mph speed range. After that it drops as the speed increases.
Steam is the opposite, the fact is the faster they go the more power they
develop. That's one reason three AC4400CW's can move a 10,000 ton freight
but it will only be at about 40 to 50 mph, but it takes six of them to move
a container train that is 1/4 of that tonnage at 75 mph.
If you look at CPR it was largely a branch line railroad until the 1960's.
If a train need to be double headed that also meant they had a lot of
tonnage, so that train was developing the revenue to justify two crews. If
the CPR had developed a significant amount of long haul traffic much earlier
they would have invested in larger steam locomotives, like many U.S.
railroads did, and had locomotives that could do the work of two or three
smaller ones and haul these same trains with one locomotive with one crew.
Foreign aid dieselized the railroads of a lot of third world countries. The
World Bank only recently admitted that was one of their major failures. It
ruined the economies of many countries, to this very day. These countries
had people who could maintain steam, they had the fuel, and they were not
dependent upon foreign exchange for parts or foreign countries for oil. When
they dieselized they did not have local fuel source, nor did they have the
skilled workers to maintain the diesels, or the foreign exchange to buy the
parts. Many diesels ran until their first failure and were then parked and
never ran again. It was easy to get new diesels every few years - thanks to
foreign aid. If you looked at the diesel rosters of some railroads in these
countries you thought they had an enormous railroad system. In reality it
was the opposite. Lots of equipment, none of it operable. Even today you can
read reports of railroads in many countries with yards full of sidetracked
locomotives and cars. They don't have the money or the skilled people to put
them back to work or buy the parts to do it.
What works in one location does not work in all locations. If you really
want to go for efficiency then we would have electrified years ago. In many
countries they did this years ago. May be one day we will wake up.
Politics is wonderful, if you listen to politicians things are always rosy.
They tell you why we absolutely need to do this or that. They don't tell you
about the cost overruns, or how they under estimated the costs, or the
scandals and debts that inevitable and are going to result from their pet
schemes. But they make everything look so good, at first. Then reality sets
in. But it is too late.
Doug
re steam vs diesel
Interestingly, I was reading recently about the steam to diesel costs
in a switching operation in New York City and IIRC, daily costs were
between $20-21 for steam vs $3-4 for diesel. It is likely CP found
similar savings and the prime reason switchers were the first major
diesel purchase CP made.
Peter Bowers
