Sorry for the clunky title. It’s sort of hard to describe.
In the late 40’s and 1950’s, when the railroads were dieselizing as fast as they could, how did they transition the workers, from one technology to another? Were schools set up to teach steam hoggers how to run diesels? What did they teach the firemen? It seems like a lot of employees would have lost their jobs, if the diesels took so much less manpower. Did they have union stipulations about severence pay? Speaking of unions, how did they deal with this change?
I dont know about US railroads but in Britain in the 1950’s and 1960’s British Rail was so short of staff I doubt if they had to make anyone compulsorily redundant, even with the large line closure programme implemented by the infamous Dr. Beeching (BR Chairman 1963 - 5).
I recall Gerald Fiennes, General Manager of the Eastern Region saying that on the former Great Eastern lines out of London Liverpool St ( the second largest and most used of the London termini) all the redundant firemen were promoted to drivers.
With regard to re-training, special classes were set up to explain how diesel engines and electric generators and motors worked. I seem to recall with the Woodhead electrification which went live in 1954, one training related problem they had was that steam drivers would equate an electric switch closed (ie on!) with closing the regulator on a steam loco.
I had several tell me that one day the diesels showed up and they had to figure it out for themselves. I was doubtful that was true but too many told me variations of the same story. As for the unions, this brought about most of the “featherbedding” issues and steams’ departure made for massive lay-offs in the backshops across the land, to say nothing of the roundhouse maintenance and even the fellows who worked on outlying coaldocks.
Murphy: I asked this same question of some former Cotton Belt employees on November 30th last year at the iced out Cotton Belt in Commerce Symposium. On the Cotton Belt the Road Foreman of Engines (RFE) was responsible for training the enginemen their new resposibilities in running the diesels. The discussion broke down after that to which RFE did what and who was better. But the concensus was that it was the RFE who did the training on the Cotton Belt. The Cotton Belt was totally dieselized by October 1953 with all steam laid up or retired.
The other note I will add to this is that I have read accounts about both ALCO-GE and EMD having travelling instructors. So it depends on the railroad as to how the employees were trained.
Railroads were very concerned that the union would claim each engine needed a crew in spite of all being operated from the lead unit so in addition to making B units the same number as the cab units in many cases with a subscript b on the unit they did one other thing. They agreed to keep on firemen in the cab. I guess the reasoning was having one guy on board they had to pay for was better than 4 or more. There was also a story about one engineer who would do something when going through transition that would spill every drop of coffee in the dining car I think on the NYC. As I recall it was something about how and when he did his brake test. Running a diesel was easier than driving a car at the time so the crews picked up the idea pretty quickly.
Maybe we need to get Michael del Sol in on this, but in the very-long thread talking about whether the steam-Diesel transition was good for the railroads or not, the conclusions of this Brown fellow who studied the American situation for British Rail and wrote an academic paper about it were 1) the railroads took a financial hit because they replaced steam motive power with remaining service life with new Diesels that they had to pay finance charges on, 2) a new Diesel will cost less to maintain than an old steam engine, but as the Diesels age, their maintenance costs increase (think keeping an old car on the road), 3) steam costs more for fuel and for the water not required by Diesels, 4) the wholesale replacement of steam servicing facility with new Diesel service facilities imposed a financial burden, and 5) the advantages of MU Diesel vs double-heading steam were overstated because most trains were pulled by steam engines sized for the job (a Northern on flat territory, articulated in mountains), and the multiple Diesel units were replacing single steam engines on most trains – train lengths didn’t start getting longer during the transition.
Of the claims by del Sol and his source Brown, the ones that raised the biggest ruckus were 1) steam was not more expensive to maintain than Diesel when you compared same-age units, and 2) with the fireman thing and the fact that train lengths didn’t increase much, the crew saving was a wash. Part of this was that by the late 1950’s there was a major recession and together with the loss of passenger and general merchandise freight to the highways, the railroad business was in decline. If there was a historical way-back machine, perhaps the railroads would have done better to stay with steam for perhaps another 10 years, casting off their most time-worn steam as traffic contracted, filling in gaps in road power with modern Northerns with good train-handling abilities and availability and continuing with getting experience with Diesel’s
As steam went out and diesels took over the senioroity system goverened the engineers and fireman as spelled out in the contract with each road.
As to how big the upheaval was depended on which terminal you worked out of. If the were a lot of doublehaeded trains, the second engine was no longer needed. Many helper engines were no longer needed. An example of which would be the C&NW helpers at Hudson, WI mentioned in Trains not too long ago. The F-3’s eliminated the need for help out of the St Croix River valley.
Several years ago there was a article by an ex UP engineer named Walt Thrall who went firing and then got promoted during WWII in southern California. Between the war ending and diesels he went from the engineer extra board to just barley haning on as a fireman. Many of those younger than him in seniority undoubtly got furloughed.
From what some of the senior enginemen told me when I started firing in the mid '60’s, they got minimal training on operating diesels unless they were on a passenger assignment. In that case they maybe got a road foreman for a round trip. Some of the yard engineers said they had to ask the hostler how the diesel worked. The engine crews also got a copy of the operating manual for that engine.
I believe one of the other advantages of diesels that hasn’t been mentioned was the braking, especially on the downhills. Also, wasn’t one of the causes of the big railroad strike in the early 1960’s due to the railroads trying to get some updated labor laws, including those impacted by diesels?
I remember the tale NDPRR is refering to. It seems the engr was transitioning between parallel and series manually instead of allowing the units to do it automatically. Since they were 3 unit psgr diesels that were esentially working as 6 1000HP units, when they all transitioned at once it gave a mighty jolt instead of 6 indiviual shifts spaced out over time. Another case was a unit tripping ground circut relays whenever going around a curve. Seems somebody had left a metal cased flashlight somewhere it it would roll and short out, hence the requirement for plastic cased flashlights.
The transition from steam to diesel saved the railroads a lot of
money. Even though the crews were to remain the same size
for many years into the future, railroad employment nationally
dropped by 38% between 1947 and 1958. This decrease was
not due to line abandonments or the demise of the passenger
train–these trends were also in the distant future. The drop was
due to all the support personnel that had been neccessary for
steam operation, but who were no longer needed in the diesel era
(mechanics, machine tool guys, maintenance workers, etc.)
The entire saga of the diesel revolution has been extensively written about. I’d refer you to the following:
Pinkepank, Jerry A. “How the Diesel Changed Railroading.” Classic Trains: Diesel Victory. (2006): 8-19.
This is the Kalmbach anthology of the history of the diesel revolution.
Klein, Maury. “The Diesel Revolution.” American Heritage of Invention and Technology (Winter 1991) 6:16-22.
Try to get a hold of a copy if this excellent article. Klein examines the effects of diesels more as a socio-economic rather than a technological phenomenon. The main reason for the triumph of diesels had just as much to do with the reduction in head-count as a technology shift. Employment went from about 1 million during the Depression to about 577,000 in 1970.
“In February 1941 the Santa Fe garnered headlines by sending a giant 5,400-horsepower engine from Chicago to Los Angeles on the first main-line freight run made by a diesel-powered train. The voyage demonstrated the diesel’s superiority in unmistakable terms. Steam locomotives making this trip required no less than thirty-five steps for water and/or fuel and nine changes of engine. The monster diesel breezed the distance with only five stops.”
Kratville, William W. “Monarchs of the West.”Classic Trains: Steam Glory.” (2004) 2:7-17.
You’d think that diesels were imposed from above on hapless operating people. In this article, however, Kratville recounts how Otto Jabelmann, one of the giants of steam locomotive engineering, became convinced of the superiority of diesel-electric technology as early 1939 and actually developed a dieselization plan for the UP. The war and a CEO sentimentally tied to steam frustrated the adoption of diesels until the late ‘40s. If it had been up to Jabelmann, UP 844, UP 3985, and the later Big Boys would never have existed.
I have an observation to add which may not have been mentioned: banks
I started firing in Jan, 1966 on the Rock Island Illinois Division. At that time, per the “282 Board Award” (1963 I think), firemen were only required on 10% of regular assigned yard and freight jobs, and all passenger jobs where they had been required prior to the award (no RDC’s, etc).
When I got marked up the firemaen in Blue Island had 14 main line psgr, 22 suburban, 6 yard, 3-4 pool turns, and 7 hostler jobs.
It is my understanding from talking w/retired SF engrs & firemen, that diesel powered psgr trains still required a fireman on board and his primary job function was to keep the boiler operating in the pre HEP era. From what I was told, this was a miserable job that was not fun at.
This may be an example of a false premise, leading to a false conclusion.
The drop in employment statistically appears most closely correlated with the drop in carloadings. Because those two events appear so directly related, it is difficult to assert, based on the statistical record, that dieselization had any measurable effect. That is, the drop in employment would have had to have measurably outstripped the drop in carloadings to justify the conclusion that dieselization was a contributing factor to the drop in employment – and it didn’t.
Of railroad employment generally, the drop in shop crafts was the second smallest decline in railroad employment during the era, the smallest drop in railroad employment was for engine crews. Every other category of railroad employment had much larger declines in employment than those categories specifically associated with the dieselization process.
Much of the decline in shop crews, while attributed to dieselization, appears also more closely correlated with the decline in overall horsepower accompanying the falloff in carloadings as well as the fact that a new engine fleet required less maintenance initially than a fleet with an average age of 27 years, irrespective of motive power type.