Wouldn’t shop crafts have included all those workers that used to work on the steam locomotives? Did they retrain to work on the diesels?
I’ve thought this was an interesting question for which a study has, oddly, never been done by the rail industry that I am aware of. I suspect that this is what happened. The statistical record is readily available if someone were to take the time to compile and analyze it.
Michael–
Obviously my post was overly simplistic and failed to do justice to
all the forces that were at work during this period in history. I
accept that.
Everything I’ve read, though, has indicated that steam locomotives
per se were more maintenance-intensive and, therefore, labor-
intensive, to keep running than were even the early diesels–
regardless of engine age. Are you saying that your working
hypothesis is that there is no difference between the two
technologies in either the amount of maintenance labor required
or the skill-level required on the part of those maintainers?
If you answer in the affirmative, I sure won’t argue with you,
but it flies in the face of a lot I’ve been told and have read.
Joe
As to any difference between the two technologies regarding maintenance labor requirements, my only thought on the matter has to come from the accrued costs incurred over equivalent time periods for equivalent ages of equipment.
To the extent that I have seen any published engineering data, I have seen this:
Actual repair costs per 1000 rail-horsepower* miles, expressed in constant 1953 dollars (cents), as incurred on US Railways through 1959, derived from the Statistics of Railways of the United States (ICC):
Age (years) … Electric … Steam … Diesel
2 … 2.5 …6 …10 cents
5… 4.5…8 …15
10 … 7.5 …11…23
15 … 10 …18…32
This does not distinguish labor costs from other costs involved in maintenance, and so this does not directly answer your question.
*edit 9/13
Interesting and eye-opening statistics, nonetheless.
Joe
You might want to recheck your derivation. According to this, a 15 year old diesel could round trip Chicago - Denver and incur maintenance costs of $0.64. (1953 dollars)
It should read “rail-horsepower miles”.
There were a lot of layoffs, but that was true throughout the rail industry – and that’s the part that is overlooked. Traffic was declining. Off the top of my head, carloadings declined 43% between 1945 and 1960 – and the shop crafts declined by about the same percentage, slightly more. But, with declining traffic, steam engines on the order of 50 and even 60 years old were being retired. If Steam had remained how would shop craft employment numbers not have inevitably declined during that era – both because of declining numbers of steam engines due to traffic losses and retirement of high maintenance older models. It was bound to happen under the circumstances of the times – and I would have expected employment in shops to declne by 43% or more if Steam had remained the primary motive power for US railroads for those reasons. I would be hard put to think of a reason why that employment drop would not have occured – steam or diesel.
And what did Dieselization really have to do with it other than the fact that new machines had a better cost advantage regarding maintenance than an existing fleet that was on the average 27 years old? There were cost benefits to that aspect of the changeover – steam or diesel.
The employees that I knew that stayed on were retrained to work on the diesels. On MILW’s electrified zones, and presumably
I don’t think carloadings is the best way to figure if train traffic and employment was declining. I would rather see some figures on tonnage. The size of the average freight car was increasing during the time being used above. I’ll quote some Cotton Belt employment figures when I get home tonight, but suffice it to say that tonnage was up, employment was down and diesels were out running on a fully equipped CTC mainline.
“Suffice it to say” that tonnage was not up. Tonnage was down. Carloadings were down. Horsepower/TE needs were down.
Railroads moved in 1944 746 billion ton-miles of traffic. The post-war low point in rail freight traffic was set in 1960 - less than 600 billion ton-miles. And haul length had increased considerably during that time (prior to 1960), meaning the total tonnage carried declined considerably more than the ton-mile measure.
According to Brown’s paper, revenue ton-miles reached a peak of about 725 billion ton-miles in the early 1940’s, then fluctuated around 600 billion ton-miles from 1945 through about 1958.
The low point during this period was about 530 billion ton-miles, which occurred in the late 1940’s.
With the exception of the peak during the war years, ton-miles during the 1950’s were up subtantially compared to 1920’s (600 billion ton-miles vs. about 400 billion ton-miles) and the 1930’s (600 billion ton-miles vs. 300-350 billion ton-miles)
As presented in Brown’s paper, total horsepower presented in terms of total tractive effort remained fairly constant from the late 1930’s through the mid-1950’s.
Anthony V.
I am pretty sure the figure for the 15-year old Diesel is 32 cents a mile per 1000 rail-horsepower, not 32 cents a mile per rail-horsepower.
That means an E7 at about 2000 HP would cost 64 cents a mile in maintenance or $640 per 1000-mile Chicago-Denver trip.
An E7 in Denver Zephyr service would make maybe 300 such trips a year, allowing for some down time for maintenance, or cost about 200,000 dollars per year in maintenance. When it was brand new, it was costing only about 70,000 dollars per year in maintenance. Does this sound high – the 1953-dollar purchase price must have been in the 200,000 dollar range for the locomotive new?
Maybe passenger service is a poor example because even in the 1950’s, freight service made up most the locomotive fleet, and a passenger engine racks up lots of miles, but it is not in Run-8 the whole time as passenger trains are overpowered to get acceleration to keep schedules. A freight engine may run up fewer miles at slower speeds at higher power settings accounting for the 10-cent through 32-cent per 1000-HP mile figure?
Paul
It is this reason I never understood presenting maintentance costs in terms of per 1000-hp-mile (as in Brown’s paper). As you point out passenger locomotives accumulate many more miles than do those in freight service. For example, a helper locomotive would accumulate relatively few miles but at high power output.
Maintenance costs per actual horsepower-hour would probably be a more appropriate measure than in terms of miles.
Anthony V.