Prior to about 1900 almost all steam locomotives were of the 4-4-0 American STANDARD type. Sure, there were variations in tender capacities, fuel, and driver size, but the overall design was pretty much the same across the board. So what happened after 1900 that changed the steam locomotive from a versatile creature that could haul coal or passengers to one that had to be designed for specialized tasks and that required railroads to roster many different types of wheel arrangements? I understand that tonnage increased, but still, wouldn’t two or three basic designs have been preferable to 10 or even 20 or more?
As far as I’m aware, Canadian Pacific had the most standardized fleet of locomotives, with most being of the ten wheeler or of the Pacific type. On the other hand CN had one of the most diverse fleets…which surely must have been problematic for shops who had to maintain a larger parts inventory and a mechanical force that had to be trained to service each of type of engine.
The American Standard lasted quite a long time, but by 1900 Ten Wheeler’s and Consolidations were the normal power on most railroads. Locomotives were always a reflection of the Master Mechanic for a railroad. Things like cylinder size, appliances, and driver diameter seemed to be personal ‘touches’. Even all the USRA ‘clones’ had small differences,and the American Standards all had many differences between them.
By the end of steam, a 5,000-6,000 hp 4-8-4 was as close to a standard locomotive as you will get. Diesel locomotive replacements at the time were also rather different from builder to builder - It took EMD to reign in all of this individualism and push standardization on the industry.
I think the term “American Standard” is a little misleading. Even though they shared the same wheel arrangement , the American’s, pre-1900 and post varied a great deal. Some examples form the late 1890’s weighed almost three times as much as Civil War engines. Driver diameters ranged from the 30"ish narrow gauge engines up to 86" on NYC’s 999. The Pennsylvania was an early proponent of standardizing locomotive components, starting in the late 1860’s. But these components were utilized in at least a dozen classes initially,ranging from 0-6-0T through 2-8-0. Steam locomotive era railroads tended to taylor design to the service the engine would be used in.
As Mr. JRBERNIER noted, EMD really did the best job of selling the railroads on the “one size fits all” concept. Need more tractive effort? just MU some more units. We can even offer you the same prime mover in a switcher form, or put two of 'em in an E7! Pretty neat concept. Had to simplify the parts and maintenance end of things. What’s to lose? Well, for starters, steam is just too cool to watch!
I think lack of standardization killed of a lot more first generation diesels than it did steam engines. In the old days if you could work on one steam engine you could work on them all. Many 'roads assumed the same with diesels. Whoops! A EMD wasn’t an ALCO which wasn’t a Baldwin which wasn’t a Fairbanks-Morse, and so on. Suddenly having a good machine shop and foundry on hand wasn’t good enough anymore.
Making a long story short, EMD wound up on top, for a variety of good reasons.
Quite the opposite. It was the master mechanics council of steam locomotive master mechanics that standardized nut and bolt thread sizes. It was the railroads that standardized time. Before that every builder had their own nuts and bolts, and every town had their own time. Many railroads tried to standardize everything from brooms to locomotives. By the time steam locos dropped the fires for good there were many parts that would fit several classes of locomotives. Look at the PRR. The self proclaimed standard railroad of the world. At one time they had more than five thousand 2-8-0 on the roster in only four classes. The K4s pacifics were the standard passenger hauler from 1914 to the end of steam.
There was a lot of standardization in appliances across railroads. I don’t think much was lost in the other components being custom ordered since they’re not things that would typically need replacing.
If my memory serves me right, TRAINS had an article more than a few years ago about a firm that attempted in the late teens-early-20’s to become a contract steam locomotive repair and rebuild shop. The business model was based on providing an alternative to railroad-owned shops during a period of labor unrest. The concept sounded good in theory but didn’t work out so well in practice, primarily because each road had its own set of parts for various components. Standardized parts for one road were rarely compatible with standardized parts of another road.
A few locomotives were actually rebuilt by this shop but the high inventory costs involved made the concept less attractive financially than originally assumed.
What killed steam was the amount of labor necessary to keep the engines running and serviceable and the frequency with which that service was required. Standardization had not effect on the amount of service that was required.
Steam always required a lot of maintenance around the clock and large crews were on duty to service the locomotives at each roundhouse and back shop. The water and fuel facilities also were maintained around the clock and when the first road diesels were tested, the water and fuel stops were by passed and a new day dawned on the railroads. The railroads operating in the Southwest area of the US had to haul water to several locations so the diesels eliminated the need for water also. Operating costs were a large factor in changing over to diesels.
I remember that. I’ll see if I can track it down in case anyone found your post intriguing and wants to read it.
Edit: Found that article. It’s titled “The Universal Backshop” and is by Eric Hirsimaki and John B. Corns. It’s about Morgan Engineering’s pioneering steps as a contract outfit for the locomotive repair business decades before such things became commonplace years after dieselization.
It’s on pages 42-49 of the January 1988 issue.
It appears it was doomed after an initial period of success due to three primary reasons:
A national shop craft union strike.
Higher repair cost due to a variety of factors over a railroad’s own backshop. These included the cost of shipping locomotives to Alliance and each railroad maintaining their own inspection and storekeeping force there.
Internal problems due to a shoestring budget, financial difficulties, poor business conditions, and a large debt load.
Differences in standards were met by a detailed contractual process that laid such things out. For instance some carriers welded on the inside of the firebox and reinforced the weld from the outside, some made all repairs using welds only, and others used a combination of welding and riveting. The contract would ensure such railroad specific standards were followed and each railroad had their own inspector on hand to ensure compliance with their own standards. And unique parts were handled by each railroad supplying the specific parts for its own locomotives with each user of the shop having their own storeroom and storekeeper to oversee their inventory.
So it appears as if the lack of standardization contribut
Most of you are aware of the standardization that occurred on the N&W, in the operation of most of its trains behind three classes: A, J and Y6, which were known as the “Modern Coal-Burning Steam Locomotive”. What also was interesting was that N&W standardized servicing procedures as well, to provide quick turnaround of locomotives comparable to that of diesels.
What killed steam was the amount of labor necessary to keep the engines running and serviceable and the frequency with which that service was required. Standardization had not effect on the amount of service that was required.
Yes, but…
Since every railroad had their own opinion on nearly everything, the majority of steam locomotive repair parts were always a short run, and their machine shop spent vast amounts of time setting up to make something different. Had there been thousands of truely identical 2-8-2s for example, shops could have set up for longer runs of parts, automated parts production, etc, all of which would have driven costs down.
Plus when you standardize, later batches can have less problems than earlier batches as ‘lessons learned’ are applied. There is the high likelihood of having the ‘same’ problems solved earlier return in later batches when every batch is a custom build.
Problems cost money and standardization would have reduced costs. .
Steam engine runs exceeding 300 miles were the exception - not the rule. Most steam engines ran across a division and got changed at the division point. The real ‘Time Sensitive’ freights with the latest power would run 2 divisions. The maintenance required precluded longer runs with any kind of reliability.
When you have a non standardized locomotive fleet - Standardization costs money, not only in securing the standardized parts, but in the engineering necessary to fit the standardized parts to non-standard engines to bring them up to standard. With this ‘new idea’ occurring at th
Many of you are still ignoring what I already said. Many of the complex parts that a railroad shop couldn’t construct themselves were fairly well standardized across the board. There weren’t dozens of competing designs during the 1930’s and the 1940’s for superheaters, turbogenerators, valve gear, reversing gear, and so on for some instances. A few outside manufacturers supplied common designs across the American railroad industry with appliances where standardization is most important are concerned.
And many of the parts that would be unique to a specific class on a modern steam locomotive aren’t the type of thing that routinely requires replacement. So that they were special orders constructed by the builders, an outside contractor, or in a railroad’s backshop isn’t as significant as it would be otherwise.
That standardization in appliances in fact is was a significant contributor to the early demise of steam on several lines. As cost went up as vendors went out of business and orders from survivors became special orders rather than off the shelf parts, repair cost skyrocketed. Even stuff that wasn’t standardized that a railroad would go outside of the company for to acquire became expensive and difficult to acquire. The Nickel Plate had to resort to buying replacement engine rods from a Canadian company at a premium price, for instance, since the American vendors had disappeared or discontinued their production.
Trains reported years ago that the disappearance of steam that was causing the vendors to leave the business had led to Class 3 repairs on the Nickel Plate for their modern Berkshires to spiral to over $57,000 by spring 1958. They didn’t provide a figure for several years earlier, but presumably it was a drastic increase.
In the 50’s Missabe was looking at Baldwin getting out of the steam locomotive business. They bought enough parts to keep the Yellowstones alive until 1970. Once they got a taste of road diesels a few years later the couldn’t get additional diesels fast enough. The parts were scrapped.
A standard diesel with a custom paint job was so vastly superior to the railroad than an optimized steam locomotive that there was just no need to tinker with the details. The same thing happened at N&W and countless others.
The war between diesel and steam wasn’t won on the road, it was won in the shops.
Well why did every railroad have to have its own shops instead of outsourcing? Like Sayre had like 5,000 employees. (or something like that) just for the little Lehigh Valley Ry.
Outsourcing is a management technique that became a major factor only in the 1970’s or so. Most businesses of all types did just about everything in-house and relatively little work was contracted out. Also, to use your example, LV was a smaller Class 1 road but still generated a sizable amount of traffic, especially before the anthracite mines played out. Also, as mentioned in prior posts, the one attempt at a contract locomotive shop in the steam era didn’t work out for a variety of reasons.
Outsourcing had yet to be invented and there was no means of effective transportation other than the means the railroad provided itself. Business with steam engines was not transacted with telephone calls - it was transacted in cold, hard steel. Words travel well for outsourcing, steel - not so much.
Remember when you outsource something you lose control over it. Sometimes it works out OK, other times it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t you’ve either got to find someone else to outsource to or re-invent the wheel on your own premises.
The steam-to-diesel transition, including the subject of locomotive standardization, is extensively covered in the following two books: From Steam to Diesel by Albert Churella and Out of Steam by Jeffrey Schramm. I would recommend both books.