Tom, 2) The title change wasn't mine. I think Frank did it. :-)
1) Economics was the demise of Steam Locomotives. The first railroad bankruptcy I can think of was the Penn Central around '71. This was after trucks and interstate highways were well established (late '50's/early 60's - but you didn't need the interstates for over the road trucking to flourish). The first thing the truckers went after was the high value/high margin commerce. In '72, we were looking for ways for the railroad to win back just-in-time auto parts delivery between auto factories from the truckers. We couldn't. Another way to look at this is as change. An old, profitable, dominant technology (railroads) was overburdened by everybody taking a slice of the pie - governments, unions, management and nobody being flexible enough to give any of it back. Along came a new technology (trucking) with a lesser cost structure, low cost labor, less regulation, and better service (both faster and more flexible). The change was inevitable, not a conspiracy. Regards, Bob S. Graywolf writes: > Well Bob's comments don't jibe with reality. Trucks did not compete effectively > with the RR until the interstates were built long after steam was gone. Further, > at his stated 30 years ago RR's were already dead and only existed in the US due > to government subsidies. Also comparing a 60 year old steam locomotive's > maintainability to a almost new diesel-electrics's is kind of silly. One assumes > that there would have been continued development. There are a lot of factors > involved in the decline of the RR's, but poor management is very near the top of > the list. Saving money today, and let tomorrow worry about itself is a Harvard > MBA philosophy that we are more and more finding out was stupid because we are > now living in that tomorrow. > > However, please note the stupid conspiracy title above is Bob's. Also, the > GM/ESSO conspiracy was not someone's pipe dream it was proven in a court of law. > The switch over of steam to diesel occurred at the same time with the same > players providing the alleged improvements. Maybe conspiracy is not such a far > out idea.
