Are you familiar with the Red Devil or the work of David Wordale? The Red
Devil is a South African 4-8-4 that was rebuilt to state of the art
technology and proved to be an embarrassment to the railroad. Why? It was
too successful. They were committed to further dieselization and this was
proving their decision to be wrong.
There is a book written about just this one locomotive which goes into
tremendous detail and gives the performance charts and costs. Worth reading.
And there was a second such modification, and it was done on a local level.
They modified a second 4-8-4 and with just a fraction of the modification
they had done on the 3450 it turned in some fantastic cost savings and
performance improvements. I had a very extensive cab ride on this locomotive
(3454) when I was in South Africa in 1984.
These locomotives had been built in the 1950's and had many state of the art
features when they were built. As modified they were real eye openers. I
believe both still exist and are used on charters and specials now.
Doug
Very true, in the mid-1950’s there were a number of important technological
advancements for the steam engine that made it a better choice than diesel.
High tensile steel, better insulation, roller bearings synthetic lubrication
and huge advancements in front end technology (steam nozzle and petticoat).
It has been suggested that if the Canadian railways waited about 5 years
they might not have moved to diesel. There were all sorts of wonderful
improvements to the engine happening all over the world.
Jeff Pinchbeck
It has been suggested by railfans and steam buffs, yes ... but not by many
serious, unbiased railroaders I've ever known who had extensive experience
with both steam and diesel. I won't rehash the arguments yet again.
Nothing the pro-steam crowd has presented to date has ever given those of us
(or perhaps most correctly, most of us) who spent time in the industry and
took any sort of interest in the question any reason to think that
dieselization was a mistake so far as at least North America is concerned.
Dieselization would have occurred simply because the ongoing improvements to
electronics allowed diesels to go places and do things which a traditionally
designed steam engine simply could not be set up to do. Remember that when
we talk about steam engines, for the purpose of this discussion we are
talking about locomotives which looked and functioned pretty much as the
traditional idea of a steam locomotive. If we had steam powered locomotives
today, they wouldn't look anything like the traditional steamers.
Joe Smuin
