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BALDWIN LOCOMOTIVES |
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the loads to be carried. These destroy inter-changeability, deny the possibilities of flexible service, and would practically destroy the existing investment in passenger equipment.
Steam power has demonstrated for generations its ability to furnish high speed service provided the tractive force of the locomotive is properly proportioned to the dead weight of the train.
The proponents of these Dieselized, highspeed trains have firmly grasped the principle of relating the dead weight of the trains to their motive power. It is up to you men to do the same thing with regard to steam.
The inherent nature of the Diesel locomotive and its accompanying electrical equipment in the present state of development debar it rom high speed road service because of the physical characteristics of the power itself, its excessive capital cost, and its probable high maintenance cost.
Per contra, the outstanding advantage of the Diesel is for work at low speed in switching or hump yard service.
Present fuel economies of the Diesel locomotive are real, but their continued repetition in the distant future is uncertain; and it appears more likely that Diesel oil will increase in price than that coal will do so.
There is no ground in recorded experience for the claim that Diesel locomotives can be maintained at a lower cost than steam. On the contrary, everything indicates that maintenance costs will be higher, but how much higher no one can say with certainty.
When considering the possibility of Diesel versus obsolete steam operation, the first thing to aid good judgment is to set up what modern steam power could do in the same operation,
If the internal combustion locomotive still indicates substantial economy, the Diesel locomotive should be seriously considered, provided that the savings on the Diesel operation represent a return on the capital investment at least equal to the return on the lesser investment required for steam.
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I wonder if you men realize how much the steam locomotive itself has improved while this Diesel development has been going on? These past ten years have registered probably a greater improvement than in any other decade of the hundred years of life of the steam locomotive. The misfortune is that this goes on in a quiet way; there is nothing dramatic about it. It just goes on. But was not until 1920 or so that we got average steam pressures around 200 pounds, and it was not before 1925 that we began to get them at 225 to 250 pounds and on up. The superheats of today are about twice what they were ten to fifteen years ago. Today's steam temperatures around 700 degrees are 50% greater than they were about ten years ago, and nearly double what they were about fifteen years ago. Larger drivers and bigger boilers give higher speeds and greater intensity of use, so that a modern road locomotive of today at speed can do approximately twice the work of a 10 to 15 year old locomotive of substantially equivalent tractive force. Then people ask how can the railroads most profitably invest what small new capital they can raise, or how can they profitably use what credit they have left? And here they have a locomotive inventory 91 per cent of which was bought before this era of improvement in steam! If anybody wants to look around to find out where the railroads can make the most money, he doesn't have to look around at all. All he has to do is just start out to supplant with modern steam power the oldest part of the existing steam inventory which is being used day by day; and that investment will vastly improve service, pay its interest, amortize the investment within the economic life of the power, and produce a substantial increase in net operating income. If anybody knows where the railroads of this country today can make more certain progress than that, I hope he will stand up this evening and tell us where. And so I say to you, "Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn."* ---------- * Being a free rendering of the Biblical injunction: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." (DEUTERONOMY 25-4.) |