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Re: (rshsdepot) "450-Ton Locomotive at the Waldorf-Astoria"



- ----- Original Message -----
From: Paul S. Luchter <luckyshow_@_mindspring.com>
> yes, the GN.....I would disagree that replacing smoke with diesel fumes
was
> one of the solutions...

Paul, I love steam as much as anybody, and more than most, but read a couple
of first-hand accounts by gassed engine crews almost drowning while
sheltering in the right-of-way drainage ditch inside tunnels on the 1920's
Rat Hole, coming up to be thankful that they'd lived even if they were
permanently a little wobbly and all the skin was burned off their ears, and
you'll agree that Our Favorite Beautiful Motive Power did have the odd
drawback here and there.  SP didn't invent cab-forwards because engine crews
liked to look out the front; it was because management couldn't afford any
more dead enginemen riding behind the smokestack.

>
> I realize that changing locomotives in the middle of nowhere is maybe just
a
> romantic aesthetic, but at least it was that....there is a lot of
silliness
> in business today, look how the company rate hikes-that absurd $5+ line
> maintenance charge on my phone bill -all the railroads needed was good
> lobbyists, charge all their expenses to the government..

    Of course if the railroads or the steam builders had ever had an iota of
good sense or understanding of how to swim in they sea they're forced to
live in, they would long ago have figured out that steam power could be a
Brilliant Employment Project; an undertaking in Preserving the Self-Esteem
of Skilled Mechanical Workers Across Mid-America; an exercise in Historic
Preservation of the Economies of Division Point Towns Across Middle America,
and probably for far less than the annual farm subsidy, have gotten the
federal government to pay the ENTIRE cost of locomotive maintenance, water
treatment, ash removal, tricky-valve-gear-adjusting, wedge-tightening,
shim-adjusting, fire-watching, ash-hauling, and all the other nutty costs
that drove steam to death in the face of EMD's brilliant marketing and
arguable economic superiority.
    Instead they spent their time issuing idiot manifestos about Creeping
Socialism that no one understood or cared about, and were probably second
only to the highway lobby (or maybe they even outdid the highway lobby) in
convincing the government and the public that the RR's were obsolete.





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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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