I tend to hijack threads with ancillary questions and gawkings (sorry), so instead of clogging AbleBakerCharlie’s thread I figured I’d start a freshie. His question got me wondering… did railroads in the West ever buy used power from railroads in the East?
I have an Erie F unit someone gave me… a good runner and a cool look, but I model (very loosely) the SP&S, NP and GN. I expect that historically all the used equipment SP&S got was hand-me-downs from parents NP and GN. So I’m not asking if it really ever DID happen, cuz I’m sure it didn’t, but was there any convention or rule or reason that a railroad in the west would ONLY buy from nearby roads? To beat the horse a bit more… if, say, the Milwaukee Road was in the market for a used loco, would they for any reason ONLY shop at Union Pacific or DRG&W or Northern Pacific but not consider old Pennsy or Western Maryland cast-offs just because of the distance? Or did any railroad buy any old loco from anywhere else if it was what they needed at the right price at the right time?
I am no expert, just my opinion here. But I would assume a railroad would contact a locomotive broker/dealer and find what they needed. If a good deal for a batch of great used locos came from FEC or B&M, so be it.
If I want a used car, I don’t go to all my neighbors and ask if they have one for sale. I go to a dealer and ask for my needs. If they get a local car, great. If it has to come from Cleveland or someplace, who cares.
Huh. I hadn’t even thought of this, but I love the picture that springs into my mind: I’m twelve and I’m in the back seat of my dad’s Galaxy 500 and we’re on our way to church, and I’m staring out the window as we go past the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant and the car dealerships, and then we come to a giant lot with colorful pennants flapping in the wind and a line of RS-1s (long hoods facing the sidewalk, natch) next to shiny F-3s and Atlantic 4-4-2s and Prairies and Moguls, all in every conceivable livery. “February Sale!” I’m not halfway to church but I’ve died and gone to heaven…
Well, as Dave points out, it often had more to do with corporate ownership than any geographic relationship. The Missabe Road got engines from other US Steel railroads, like B&LE or EJ&E for example. They also leased engines from other roads, notably Great Northern F-units.
In the transition era, railroads getting rid of steam sometimes sold them or leased them to other roads, but often there was enough scrap value in the engines that the railroads just sold the engines for scrap metal and used the money towards new engines.
Although in the sixties railroads might sell their old first-generation diesels to another railroad, they might get as good a deal using it as a ‘trade in’ on new second generation engines. EMD was particularly noted for accepting pretty much any locomotive in trade in deals for new engines. I know Soo Line got a good deal on GP-30s because EMD used the trucks from Soo’s trade-in Alco FAs.
I might be wrong, but I think leasing companies - companies that bought used engines, fixed them up, then leased them out - didn’t get to be ‘a thing’ until maybe the 1980s.
I’m interested in this aspect. If a railroad acquired a second hand steamer near the end of the transition era, 1956 in my case, would they likely reletter it for their road or just leave it as is figuring the steamers would be gone soon and not worth the trouble to reletter it.
My fictional railroad is a subidiary of the NYC and has a number of NYC cast off steamers which I continue to run in their original lettering. I acquired a Delaware and Hudson 4-8-4 because at the time, there wasn’t a quality Niagra available. I’ve considered relettering it for my fictional railroad but if it is plausible to continue to run it with D&H lettering, that would be my preference.
To me the need for engines for a specific service and the necessary tractive effort to perform the needed service. Then you look to see which railroad has locomotives for sale that might fit your needs. Send an operations person out to go over the engines to see what shape they are in. You do not want to buy a lemon. If they are in good shape mechanicaly say we are interested and negotiate a price for them.
In 1956 a major railroad is unlikely to BUY a used steam engine. What railroads were doing was leasing surplus steam engines until they could replace them with NEW diesels. The PRR leased several steam engines from the RDG and ATSF and used them for a few years until diesels were produced, then returned them to the RDG and ATSF who scrapped them.
I had an A-B pair of Bessemer Fs that were surplus on my layout. B&O bought several (10 of each IIRC) and photo evidence shows they just “patched-out” the Bessemer lettering and slapped a B&O on the side and took the time to mount a brass Capitol dome on the nose:
Similarly, the Rio Grande had some surplus Fs that were slated for trade-in to EMD. Somehow Penn Central got wind of the deal and bought (or leased from EMD?) the engines with minimal painting done. Just get 'em on the road:
One of biggest dealers in second hand steam locos was Southern Iron and Equipment, who went back to 1900
Company History: The Southern Iron & Equipment Company (SIECO), a family-owned business located in Atlanta, Georgia, was a major reconditioner of locomotives in the period ca. 1900-1960. The company purchased locomotives, refurbished them, and then sold them. In addition, the company did repair and reconditioning work on behalf of various railroads. It also manufactured a number of rail cars.
Another factor at work is the motive power philosophy of the railroad in question. For example in the 1970s and 1980s there were certain railroads that decided to stick with ALCO power, even as it was being retired in droves by Class 1s and shortlines, because their shop forces knew ALCOs well and parts inventories were pure ALCO anyway. So a railroad such as the Kankakee Beaverville & Southern would have used ALCOs from all over. There were similar ALCO rosters out east that would take advantage of the availability of ALCOs being shed by such railroads as the all-ALCO Green Bay & Western, if only just for parts.
A similar example is when the former Soo Line was selling off its former main line because it had acquired the Milwaukee Road’s track, and a group of experienced railroaders acquired the old Soo Line trackage and brought back the 19the century name Wisconsin Central. They needed big locomotives and they needed them cheap, and they reasoned that if they focused on one model – in this case the SD45 – their shop forces and parts inventories could be highly specialized, and this coincided with SD45s reaching the end of their depreciation schedules on the Class 1s so SD45s from all over were heading to Fond du Lac WI. I saw a huge consist of all Santa Fe SD45s heading north on the Wisconsin Central. Whether they bought them from the Santa Fe directly or from a locomotive dealer I do not know, but I do recall an article in Trains about the process of evaluating an SD45 before they bought it - they weren’t just blindly buying them up, they only wanted the good ones. But again they were buying SD45s from all sorts of railroads with wide geographic spread. I do think they wanted dynamic brakes so that left some sources untapped.
My point is that in these cases the origin of the used locomotive was largely irrelevant to the acquiring railroad.
Look up the detail history of Peabody Coal Company’s buying, maintenance, and operating practices. (These are the locomotives that hauled Paradise away!) Incidentally still one of the best inspirations for freelanced model liveries that has been…
PRR is notable for buying (not just leasing) locomotives from the West. While the 2-10-4s going up to Sandusky weren’t relettered, the “FF2s” from Great Northern certainly were…
I doubt D&H bought PAs for the Adirondack, or a pair of Baldwin Sharks for freight, for their reliability in service… incidentally the paint on the latter comes from a ‘foobie’ model source, and in fact would have been a variant of the NYC lightning-stripe had a local hobby shop had a slightly better selection…
…and a savvy N&W could have leased rather than sold the boxcabs that became E33s… although we might recognize a particularly pointed case of ‘get the money first’ there… [:-^] Note that the New Haven had no use, perhaps because no clearance, for the Virginian’s other postwar heavy electric power…
While we are discussing N&W, what about those E units that handled passenger service in the first years after the Js were taken off passenger trains?
The Missabe did something similar with the B&LE F-units they had on the property for a couple of years while transitioning to all-diesels. (DMIR of course was a late-comer, using mainline steam into 1960.) Of course, both railroads were owned by US Steel.
However, leased engines were generally not relettered. They were still the property of the owning railroad, and often railroads only leased engines for a short time. During WW2, when ore traffic was idled in the winter, the DMIR leased some Yellowstones to the Rio Grande IIRC. Rock Island used to lease NYC diesels for a few months in fall / early winter for the grain rush. Even when it was longer, like DMIR leasing GN F-units, they weren’t relettered.
A lot of what is being discussed is era specific. A leased locomotive is not usually repainted except in the case of a number conflicting with the leasing road’s own power. Then a “patch” renumbering is done, usually to a series not used by the leasing road. Why go to the expense of painting something that will be gone in a few months anyway? Not only that, the owner does not want the expense of repainting it back to its original scheme, either. Even when a road buys retired power from another railroad, that they don’t intend to keep very long, in most cases they simply paint out the old road name, apply minimal new identification and renumber as with the ex B&LE F units. Rock Island bought a bunch of Union Pacific “F9AMs”, actually upgraded F3s and painted out the UP markings and slapped RI heralds on the nose and flanks-voila! Yellow Rock Island F-units in the GP40 era of the 1970s, complete with UP’s huge, slanted snowplows on the nose.
Precision National of McCook IL did the scrapping for EMD and cut up a lot of otherwise serviceable locomotives at a time when the second generation of dieselization was taking place. The need for operable locomotives to ease the short-term power shortages until locomotives on order could be delivered led them to start leasing some of these operable units out, under the Precision National PNC label. I believe one of the first units to wear their green and yellow was a former Southern Pacific GP-9.
A new industry was spawned in rebuilding wrecked and burned locomotives into leasers. Chrome Crankshaft, and Illinos Central Gulf’s Paducah shops joined the parade, with Paducah doing contract work for many railroads. The 1980s saw Paducah had become VMV and was overhauling SD40s for their own lease fleet. The 80s became the era of the lease returns. The SD45 had fallen out of favor due to
I remember John Denver singing the song about Mr. Peabody’s coal train but I had to look it up to discover it was originally written and sung by the late John Prine, who was a victim early on of the Covid pandemic.
