[PRCo] UMW blamed for diesels

Thu May 15 15:11:03 EDT 2014

I would have to agree with the statement you copied, Dwight, that the enthusiasts' interest is inversely proportional to the carriers economic viability.   You could probably sell 100 books on the Rio Grande Southern for every one on the economics of moving freight trains at streetcar headways on the Union Pacific.  Same thing applies with our trolleys … the lines we loved the most in Pittsburgh were things like 23 Sewickley or 29 Thornburg … not the money making ones like 88 Frankstown or 22 Crosstown or 85 Bedford.

How many modern steam locomotives do you know?   The modern ones were bought by dumb railroaders who should have bought diesels.   The N&W J class and Y6bs and As were rare in the industry.   So were the Nickel Plate Berkshires.  The Santa Fe probably had their share of modern power because it was cheaper than sending a shop crew 100 miles out into the Mojave Desert to put an engine back together.   The bulk of what was out there even into the mid 1950s were critters built in the teens and twenties with friction bearings.   

Now if we are talking crews … that took a strike by the FEC that went on for months about 1963 to end it on one railroad, then Amtrak to end it on national passenger service, and eventually it disappeared.   But even Penn Central had 100 mile engine crew days and 150 mile train crew days.   That meant an engineman working from Harrisburg to Philadelphia got paid 1.03 days for somewhere between 105 and 140 minutes actual work plus 30 minutes additional report time.  Make a round trip in one day and you get 2.06 days pay.   Work three days a week and you get 6 1/4 days pay.    I think when the Metroliners were put into service, they had some guys working Washington - New York that made a round trip in one day … something like 6 or 7 hours  … and got close to 4 days pay for that.   Obscene. 

We had that argument ten days ago about the idiocy of building the T-1 from scratch and where they are going to run the sucker.  And I will repeat what I said then, "If we're going to build something from scratch, a New York Central J3 Hudson makes a whole lot more sense than replicating something that was no good when it was new."   The J-1 was slippery on starting.   It enveloped the crews in a rolling dust cloud.   They tried to correct the problems with one or two of them that had the poppet valves replaced with Walschart valve gear and piston valves … I think 5547 was one of those.   But when you are at the end of the rope with a piece of junk, you don't pour dollar bills down a well.   

Remember that this was before the rules were rewritten for today's tourist railroads.   A steam locomotive had to have the flues removed so you could inspect the inside of the boiler every four years unless you could document 12 months in the first four years when it did not run, they you could get an automatic fifth year.   That means every steam locomotive until sometime around 2000 needed new flues every 4 years.   Did any of those T-1s ever get a second set of flues?   I think they were all out of service by 1952 which suggests to me the flues ran out in 1950 and the ICC gave them two one year extensions and then they were all scrapped.    

The J-1s were a little more reliable … I gather they were retubed about 1948, and then around 1952 and that would take some up to the end of 1956 out in Columbus.

On May 15, 2014, at 12:13 PM, Dwight Long wrote:

> 
> Fred
> 
> While I agree with most of what you say (the only part being the 100 mile rule, which with modern steam power was quite obsolete—a modern steam loco could run a thousand miles before needing that sort of attention), we were discussing the PRR, not railroads in general.  In the PRR’s case one had to take internal railroad politics into account.  They had more effect on the timing of conversion to diesel (which was inevitable) than anything else, including then current legislation.  As soon as Martin Clement and John Deasy were deposed, and James Symes became the power on the PRR (even though Walter Franklin was actually the President for a while), the conversion proceeded as quickly as the PRR could obtain diesels—and from any builder!  Had that transition to power in Philadelphia taken place even five years earlier, there would have been no T1s or Q2s and the conversion would have been more orderly, less pell-mell, and ultimately less costly for the so-called Standard Railroad of the World.  
> 
> And now someone wants to build a T1 from scratch????   Just goes to prove the saying—not sure if was from Jack White or George Hilton—that the amount of rail enthusiast interest in a particular railway or railway part is inversely proportional to its economic usefulness.
> 
> Dwight
> 
> From: Fred Schneider 
> Sent: Thursday, 15 May, 2014 09:01
> To: Western PA Trolley discussion 
> Subject: Re: [PRCo] UMW blamed for diesels
> 
> I think we have to look at everything ….
> 
> 1.   Smoke control laws.
> 
> 2.   UMW strikes making it hard to get coal.
> 
> 3.   Economics of running steam … we can lay off 4 out of every 5 workers and well a lot of ground we had used for shop buildings.  Might even be able to sell some shop buildings to other people for factories but that isn't too likely.
> 
> 4.   No need for water in the deserts of the American west.   
> 
> 5.   Locomotive availability … that diesel will run for thousands of miles before it needs any servicing.   Fueling can be done from a truck driven up to the railroad … we don't need water columns, tanks, coal tipples.   And the steam engine will run about 100 miles between service stops and it needs a lot of spare engines along the way because it likes to self destruct.  
> 
> An example of the self destruct concept….   When the PRR ran steam from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, there was a K4s stationed in Lancaster as a protect engine.   In the evening it sat in the station facing west because most trains ran west in the evening.   In the morning in faced east.   Always with a crew on it.   John Bowman told the story of standing in the cab of that K4 one day talking when he was told to jump off NOW.   The signals had changed to clear on the pocket track.  They were going to work.   In January 1938, when the wires were energized to Harrisburg, the protect engine was no longer needed.  
> 
> The steam engine may have been pretty to the railfan … dynamic … great to watch.   But we have to think how many billions of dollars were saved by scrapping them ……….. and how much cleaner the sky is over Pittsburgh, Pitcairn, Glenwood, Rook, McKees Rocks and other places.  
> 
> I've been sending these guys some interesting articles on Pittsburgh Railways.   I have ignored the smoke control stories but they are there too.   And there was an occasional picture of downtown on days when you couldn't see the top of the Gulf Building from the street.   
> 
> 
> On May 15, 2014, at 8:21 AM, John Swindler wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Easier to blame another industry/organization than to look at the economics of railroad operation.  Some of David Morgan's writing talk about the reduction/elimination of labor costs associated with conversion to diesel - despite the high initial capital costs for diesel operation.  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
>>> Date: Fri, 2 May 2014 14:33:45 -0400
>>> To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
>>> Subject: [PRCo] UMW blamed for diesels
>>> 
>>> Writer forgets that the PRR announced several days earlier that it would cooperate with smoke control.   Blame cannot be totally based on either smoke control, economics or John L. Lewis and his boys.  
>>> 
>>> http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FisbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6kwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3025%2C2594239
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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