F M E N T E R S T H E B U S I N E S S
By Robert L Aldag Jr.
Near my hometown in Indiana there are trees-large
trees-growing in the right of way where Hudsons of the New York
Central used to turn up a cool 80. Had I not been through there
many times, clocking the mile-posts, I would make no attempt now
to convince anyone that in that overgrown ravine there once ran a
principal line of a major railroad.
Something akin to that feeling confronts me as I begin these
reflections on the course of Fairbanks, Morse & Co.'s venture in
the locomotive business undertaken when Seaboard Air Line and
Atlantic Coast Line were separate companies, when there was a
Central of Georgia and a Wabash and a Chicago Great Western. Some
70 or so Class 1 railroads and belt lines were at the beginning
of the revolution that would replace more than 40,000 steam
locomotives with a little more than half that number of diesel
electrics. And it was a time when the fiefdoms of entrenched
chief mechanical officers, which had spawned a fascinating
variety of steam locomotives, were yet to be swept aside by the
tidal wave of standardization that had to come.
The celebrated nonstop dawn-to-dusk run of Burlington's
Pioneer Zephyr from the Denver Union Station to the grounds of
the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition had been history for
only 10 years. Small fleets of diesels had been pulling
conventional passenger trains for 5 or 6 years. And it was less
than 4 years from the time of demonstration runs of the first
four ElectroMotive FT 1350 h.p. freight units in mainline
service. But by then, railroad managers and other astute
observers had seen enough. The debate was over. The motive power
of the American railroads would be diesel-electric.
Electro-Motive was sure of it, and Fairbanks Morse & Co. was sure
of it too.
Six railcars had been built by the St. Louis Car Co. in 1939
for the Southern Railway using FM opposed-piston diesel engines.
After that, the entire production of that engine was taken by the
Navy to build up the submarine fleet, as well as for other
diesel-powered boats. So in 1943, as the War Production Board
began to ease material allocations and while EMD was booking
orders for FT's from Burlington and Denver & Rio Grande Western
and others. Fairbanks, Morse & Co. was deciding to be in the
diesel-electric locomotive business to pick up where it had left
off 4 years earlier.
When those first FT's hit the rails, I was at Purdue
University majoring in railway mechanical engineering. The Erie
Railroad hired three of us to enter a special apprentice program
that year, so at the Hornell (N.Y.) backshops I found out
firsthand what it took to overhaul and to erect steam
locomotives. I swung the copper sledge for the Timken engineer
who was checking the lateral clearances of the first main driving
axle roller bearings on the Erie a K-5, No. 2940 if I recall
correctly. Before that first year was out, two of us had been
attracted by thc particular verve of the Burlington and had moved
to Chicago. At the Q's motive power headquarters, I was assigned
to diesel engine maintenance supervision, a base from which I was
borrowed for a variety of things like the dynamometer car tests
of the poppet-valve equipped 0-5a 4-8-4, No. 5625, and for doing
all of the calculations of train performance in preparing for the
arrival of the Q's first fleet of FT's in l944.
The invitations to the young representative of the Burlington
Route to visit FM's Beloit (West Allis) plant during the spring
of 1944. and to witness the debut of FM's first switcher in
August of that year, were accepted with no thought that I would
become a part of that venture. Yet in June 1946, I joined FM as a
sales engineer and soon took up a post of leadership within the
locomotive sales organization. From mid-1958 to the end of 1960,
I was FM's fourth and last manager of its locomotive business.
In those very early contacts with FM, it was apparent that in
1949, despite EMD's enormous lead, two factors had convinced FM
that it should venture; the size of the market and the
opposed-piston (OP) engine. The OP had earned an enviable
reputation in those Navy boats. It had repeatedly delivered the
overload performance needed at times in battle operations with
such success that FM had received more than praise. Bonuses had
been paid for performance, and that was heady wine. Moreover, the
OP had the right power to overload ability and its unique opposed
piston principle was a hair more efficient than that of
conventional two-cycle diesels; its rpm range was practical for
state-of-the-art traction generators; and its slim in-line
profile was a nice fit in rail vehicles that would meet U.S.
rail- road clearance restrictions. It seemed a cinch that this
engine, proved in the crucible of war, would perform well and
would win broad acceptance on the railroads.
In a later context, we will take a closer look at those
assumptions. It is sufficient to say now that in those days FM
was looking at the fact that it did not have an integral
organization dedicated to the locomotive product, that it did not
have production drawings from which to build a locomotive, and
that it did not have a shop in which to build them. If FM was to
go, it had to fill those gaps now!
The obvious starting point was the 1000 h.p. switcher. Those
maids of all terminal work were in first demand to clear away the
smoke pall over cities and to realize the enormous economies
relative to steam switcher operation. FM utilized General Steel
Castings' cast-steel underframe that had been standard on Baldwin
switchers, modifying it only slightly for fitting the OP engine.
FM applied Westinghouse electricals similar to those used by
Baldwin, which meant that the GSC four-wheel truck frames which
were suitable for Westinghouse Model 362 traction motors (long a
BLW standard) were immediately available to FM with almost no
change. Thus a tight little group of engineers, drawn from FM's
several engineering departments at Beloit, assisted by an outside
consultant and directed in styling by Raymond Loewy, put together
FM's first diesel-electric locomotive of this new era. Before a
crowd of railroad executives, industry notables (such as R. M.
Dilworth, Chief Engineer of Electro-Motive), and sundry others,
FM rolled out Milwaukee Road No. 1802 on a sultry day in August
1944. Rolled it out of the opposed-piston engine manufacturing
shop, that is. There was no locomotive shop then. there was no
production line, and no road locomotive design. Although FM would
eventually have all of that at Beloit, it could not wait for the
build-up of facilities and organization if it was to be ready
with the big power in time. In consequence, FM had already
launched its search for a working arrangement with an established
locomotive builder and had found one.
THE ERIE-BUILTS
Look around the country for the possibilities, and you come
up with General Electric every time. GE had built the traction
equipment for most, if not all, of the early streamliners. It had
been the principal supplier of electric transmissions to
Electro-Motive until EMD began to manufacture its own. GE had
been, and would be, the sole supplier of electricals to the
American Locomotive Company. GE had built the majority of the
straight electrics of the modern era, and it had an
under-utilized locomotive erection shop and test track facility.
Perhaps most important was GE's apparent interest in putting
the Erie Works into the mainstream of the coming locomotive
business without competing directly with Alco. As subcontractor
to FM, GE could do just that. And so it was that FM acquired,
virtually with the stroke of a pen, the means to design and build
mainline road locomotives. FM was in the game!
It was a game already in high gear. coming out of the war,
the railroads would have a desperate need for the economy and the
superior performance of the diesel-electrics. The speed at which
the builders could deliver locomotives and the availability of
ways to borrow the money to pay for them would be the primary
measures of how quickly dieselization would occur. EMD had set
the pattern: a very few standard models produced by a masterful
blending of shop layout and the methods of the automobile
industry. There was no question about following that pattern. The
question was, "What to build?"
Locomotives of 6000 h.p. were expected to command the cream
of the business on the major railroads. Although still in
production on four-unit, 5400 h.p. FT's, EMD had the "Gray
Goose," first of the four-unit, 6000 h.p. F3's, in the works and
would soon be demonstrating it. Alco had announced its new Model
244 engine and would build four-unit, 6000 h.p. freight
locomotives and three-unit, 6000 h.p. passenger locomotives. FM
decided to build a three-unit, 6000 h.p. locomotive suitable for
both freight and passenger service, a decision that was a
harbinger of the Train Master. FM opted in 1944 to go for what it
intended would be the universal locomotive in a single design.
Into that decision one can read, also, the potential cost
saving foreseen in building three instead of four units to
produce a 6000 h.p. locomotive. To implement that decision, FM
and GE took a deliberate step into the future: the Erie-built was
the first diesel-electric freight locomotive to distribute its
power at the rate of 500 h.p. per driving axle. Students of the
second and third generation of diesel-electrics have seen that
benchmark passed long ago. but in the mid-1940's it was a daring
move.
The transformation of how the U.S. railroads would move their
trains had two aspects. The change in how the energy of fossil
fuel would be converted into useful mechanical energy is what is
commonly referred to as "dieselization," a term that has come to
imply the whole story. But there was another profound change: the
change in how usefill mechanical energy is transmitted into the
tractive force that moves trains. That change was and is
electrification. The superior train performance when using
series-wound direct-current traction motors to turn the driving
wheels of a locomotive had been understood for years. It just had
not been available. Diesel-electrification made it available
everywhere. But, unlike the straight electrics, which could draw
extra power from the distribution system for acceleration, the
diesel-electric was limited to its engine rating. The engine
rating, then, quickly became the common way to define the size of
a locomotive, a usage which tended to obscure such fundamentals
as the tractive force that the d.c. traction motors could sustain
continuously without overheating and the amount of power that
could be transmitted to the wheel-rail contact points of each
driving axle.
The transmission of 500 engine horsepower per driving axle
drew attention. in effect. to these Erie-built freight units as
electric locomotives. To back up that rating, the Eries were
equipped with the largest traction motors in the business, the GE
746 which had been designed originally for the big electrics of
the Great Northem and the Virginian. GE had conservatively rated
12 of these motors on the three-unit locomotive as roughly equal
to, or a bit higher than, the rating set by EMD on 16 motors of
the four-unit F3's. The motors could do it. of course. but how
about the wheels?
The friction force between wheels and rails required by the
Erie-built at its continuous motor rating was about 18 to 19 per
cent of its weight on drivers. The corresponding figure for the
EMD's. rated at 375 h.p. per axle. was in the range of 14 to 15
per cent. Both of these ratios were well within the limits of the
natural friction force between steel wheels and clean dry steel
rails. but the Eries obviously had less margin against slipping
under adverse conditions, a point that was not lost on FM's
competitors.
Proponents of moving up the scale in power per axle had a
point. They were convinced that the future in transportation
would belong to those who moved trains on faster schedules. A
concept that precluded the dragging of heavy trains up long
ruling grades at speeds of 14 or 15 mph, the speed at which the
EMD's developed their continuous tractive effort. They thought
that trains would, or should, be moved over such grades at speeds
that would ensure far more power in the locomotive per ton of
train. thus making practical the higher h.p. per-axle
locomotives. Those who held a different view noted that the
diesel-electric had an inherent reserve tractive force capacity
in its many driving axles which could eliminate costly helper
service and enhance the reliability of train operations under
adverse circumstances. Both arguments were valid. FM and GE were
convinced that they were not giving away too much of the traction
argument advantage in using the 12-axle drive for 6000 h.p.
But why not keep the required friction ratio low by
increasing the weight per axle in proportion to the increase in
power? Here the locomotive designer encounters the civil
engineer. whose bridges and track structure limit both total
weight and individual axle loads. Given the state of the
metallurgy of wrought steel wheels and the rails of that period.
the limits set by railroad engineering departments fell roughly
between 60,000 and 65,000 pounds per axle for locomotives which
had 40-inch or 42-inch wheels. These were ratings for the top
main lines; ratings for secondary lines would be somewhat less.
So, the Erie-built's AlA-AlA running gear was found to be the
best option. The units would be too heavy for the four axles of a
B-B wheel arrangement, so there would have to be six axles. By
selecting the GE 746 motor and fitting four of them into the
AlA-AlA arrangement, FM and GE retained the relative simplicity
of the main power circuits of a four-motor transmission and
avoided the higher cost of a six-motor drive. Those two idler
axles were the low-cost altenative. The designers weren't
unloading needed weight from the drivers; they were simply
providing enough axles to carry the total weight. And they were
correct in doing so; the Eries all tended to weigh in on the
heavy side of specifications.
While the engineers at Erie were completing the design, Union
Pacific bought the first three. It was a question of power. In
the final years of steam, the 840-class 4-8-4's and the Big Boy
4-8+8-4's had been supreme expressions of UP's quest for power to
move its trains fast over the great distances of the Overland
Route. UP liked everything about the Erie-built. UP knew how 6000
h.p. would perform, and those big traction motors were just the
sort of thing it was looking for. UP ordered both dynamic braking
and train heating steam generators. which pointed out the
adaptability these units had for both heavy passenger and
selected high-speed freight service. The UP was big enough, the
quintessential railroad to be the first to try the Erie-builts,
and UP knew it. Furthermore, UP's people wanted a look at that
Navy engine. And FM's game plan arrived at its first plateau when
those first three UP's rolled out to Omaha in December 1945.
It was a fair start. Then came a couple of blows. FM's Beloit
plant went out on a strike of such duration and severity that all
locomotive production was interrrupted for about 9 months. On top
of that, the OP engine, never before exposed to the rigors of the
High Plains and the Great Basin, was in serious trouble on the
UP. The UP people were not pleased. It took more than a year to
get a repeat order (for two units)just in time to paint them for
display at the 1947 Atlantic City convention of the Association
of American Railroads. Subsequently, UP bought 8 more, making a
total roster of 13 units.
Thirteen units, Hardly a big score on a railroad like the UP,
but those last 10 were a real accomplishment. To overcome the
sales resistance fallout from the engine problems of early 1946,
FM had to find the senior officers who would both listen to the
facts about engine-problem solutions that had been accomplished
and use their authority to give FM an order. Persuading those
individuals to give us their vote of confidence amid the
countervailing forces and the changing strategies of that great
railroad in those days was a šItour de force› matched in the FM
locomotive saga perhaps not more than two or three times.
Details? Let's just say that it wasn't easy!
The Milwaukee Road gave FM its first substantial order. It
was no tentative decision when Milwaukee bought five 6000 h.p.
passenger Eries for its new šIOlympian Hiawatha› trains. The road
was at the beginning of dieselization and was moving to build on
the success of the famous šIHiawatha› trains by extending such
modern service over its long reach to Puget Sound. The Eries had
the power to make the schedule, the traction-motor capacity to
take the Rockies and the Cascades in stride, and dynamic braking
to provide train operation on long descending grades similar to
the regenerative braking of the old straight electrics used on
the original šIOlympian› . Milwaukee knew the reputation of the OP
engine and was well satisfied with its 1000 h.p. FM switchers.
Then too. there was a certain appropriateness about having
locomotives from an on-line builder pulling the new trains.
But it was not until 1947 that the Erie-built found the
market for whieh it had been created. Pennsylvania Railroad's
order for 16 6000 h.p. A-B-A freight locomotives was the largest
single order ever booked by Fairbanks-Morse for locomotives.
Pennsy, then well known for its reluctance to give up on coal as
its primary source of energy, finally bit the bullet of all-out
dieselization in late 1946. So Pennsy immediately became FM's,
and possibly everyone's, largest customer. To get an order, the
builders had to submit sealed bids. which were opened publicly
according to provisions of a Federal law which applied to
companies like the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose Board of
Directors included directors of other major companies such as
General Motors and General Electric. In the circumstances of such
open bidding, the Pennsy's big order for the Erie-builts gave
Fairbanks, Morse & Co. a status of acceptance in the locomotive
business that was unmatched by any other event.
Without doubt there were many factors that went into that
award to FM. Among them would be the pent-up demand to replace
the 4000-plus steam locomotives the Pennsy had, particularly the
mainline power which was still principally aging K4 Pacifics and
Mla Mountains. By any index--power, weight on drivers,
traction-motor capacity--the Erie-built 6000 h.p. freighter was a
big step ahead of anything the Pennsy had west of Harrisburg,
including the Jl 2-10-4's and the Q2 4-4-6-4 duplex-drives. A
substantial part of the GGl fleet had been built at Erie, so
there was a built-in high level of confidence in the organization
there that had designed, and would build, the new FM's. Pennsy
liked the three-unit concept and knew what that big traction
motor meant to it. Or so we learned after the order was placed. I
recall the sheer anxiety of the days before the order; afterward,
working with the Pennsy was a pleasure.
Surprisingly, the Erie-built fit the plans of a smaller
railroad, the Kansas City Southern and its affiliated Louisiana &
Arkansas. Seeking the highest possible flow of traffic over its
single-track line, KCS back in the 1930's had begun running a few
very long trains each day with big 2-10-4's and, later, with
four-unit EMD's. By 1946 the railroad had spotted a problem: as
it attracted traffic. it needed to run its trains faster and
deliver the carloadings on competitive schedules. So, when the FM
salesman came to call, KCS was ready with questions about the
feasibility of a four-unit, 8000 h.p. locomotive. FM's
application. engineering department spent weeks on analysis and
in preparation of detailed charts which were reviewed with KCS to
be sure that all the pros and cons had been considered. The
consensus was favorable. and KCS ordered an A-B-B-A. 8000 h.p.
Erie-built.
In those days big trains had big amounts of slack in the
coupler-drawbar assembly. Freight-car draft gears were mostly
spring and wedge affairs with minimal cushioning effect; the
cushioned underframe was in the future. The long KCS trains would
span numerous "hog backs" (sharp changes from upgrade to
downgrade and vice versa) simultaneously at many locations.
resulting in uncontrolled slack run-ins and run-outs. At the
somewhat higher speeds produced by the 8000 h.p. locomotive,
these big slack run impacts took on a dimension. Too many broken
drawbars were showing up on the train delay report each morning,
and KCS had to give up, buying only five more Erie units to round
out three 6000 h.p. locomotives.
During 1945, Santa Fe followed UP in buying one A-B-A 6000
h.p. passenger locomotive to try out on the Chicago Los Angeles
main line, to be numbered 90. The timing of the order put the
units in the production schedule af- ter the 15 Milwaukee units,
a circum- stance which together with the FM Be- loit plant strike
put their delivery in May 1947. By the time No. 90 arrived at
Barstow to take up its work on the regular passenger roster,
Santa Fe had developed a finely tuned, well equipped maintenance
facility geared to EMD and Alco power, and the 90 was odd man out
from the word go. Add to that a fundamental problem posed by the
OP which I'll describe later, plus Santa Fe's evaluation of the
early problems on, the UP units operating in that region, and it
is clear that for mainline power, FM was on a dead-end street
with the Santa Fe.
The Erie-built may have been on its way to a success story on
the New York Central, but we will never know. Central bought two
freight A's, and a year later, six freight units and six pas-
senger units. That second order might have been larger had there
been anything to sell. As it was, 9 of those 12 just made it.
because they were an addition to the original contract for 102
units, an addition agreed to after some tough, prolonged
negotiations between FM and GE.
What went wrong? Cost. Building the Erie units had proved far
more costly than either company had expected. The FM strike in
1946 had nearly wiped out production at Erie while overhead costs
continued--just one of many factors. Conceived as producing a
steady flow of four units a month, the Erie program didn't
approach that until sometime in 1947. Even then, the costs were
such that there was no justification for continuing without a
radical change in either cost, or price, or both. Neither company
could find a solution; so, with 46 sold for passengr serice and
65 for freight, the Erie program ended.
Would it have made sense for FM , to just take the drawings
to Beloit and continue to build and sell these locomotives?
Probably not. The Erie was just plain too expensive. It could not
be built at a cost that would generate a profit at competitive
selling prices--in fact, quite the opposite. It wasn't a matter
of production technique or lack of facilities or good
productivity in the shop. It was the cost of the things that went
together to make that locomotive what it was. Item; the GE 746
traction motor--far heavier and somewhat more costly than the GE
752 used by Alco. It is a reasonable conjecture that FM would
have been as well off with the GE 752; certainly Alco was having
no trouble getting orders. The GE 746 may have been FM's only
option due to other commercial factors; the fact remains that it
was expensive. Item: a complete secondary direct-currerrt power
system for the radiator fan and traction-motor-blower motors. FM
was doing that on all models in the 1940's but abandoned it for
more cost-effective alternating-current systems during the
1950's. Item: the dual cooling system in which one part
circulated water to cool the cylinder liner jackets in the OP and
another part circulated cooling water to a heat exchanger which,
in turn, cooled the lubricating oil. This was Navy practice. All
later models had just one system for both functions. The higher
cost of the dual cooling system yielded no real benefit.
Those are just three examples of costly "nice-to-have"
features that were in the Erie-built specifications. But that
wasn't all. GE ran into trouble on the procurement side as well,
especially in regard to the cast steel truck frames and bolsters.
Foundry people viewed the truck as being a new design; at the
least, it was sufficiently different from the Alco six-wheel
truck for them to make such a case. There were new foundry
patterns to be paid for, with the result that the cost of the
castings was well above GE's budget. GE moved to develop a second
source of supply, after all, EMD had done that very thing by
bringing in another foundry to compete for its truck castings
business. But GE elected to accomplish this proven business
tactic by designing an all-welded truck that could be fabricated
right there at the Eirie Works. It was a clean, sound textbook
solution, but it didn't work. Only UP, KCS, and NYC accepted a
limited number of the welded trucks. The costs of engineering
time to design it. of the special jigs and fixtures in the shop,
and of carrying the additional inventory of two optional truck
designs all had to be absorbed in the selling price of those few
units. Meanwhile, there was no relief in the prices charged for
the cast steel frames which most of FM's customers wanted. It was
a double penalty.
In retrospect. it seems clear that the primary function of
the Erie~built locomotive program. from the builder's point of
view, was that it put FM in the business. The seeds of the Erie's
demise were sown at the beginning. but the Erie-builts bought the
time that FM needed to get under way at Beloit.
THE EARLY HOODS
The roll-out of the first three UP's at Erie in 1945 also
marked the end of the era of introduction and promotion for which
John W. Barriger III had been so ably suited as the first manager
of FM's locomotive division. He had sold 21 Erie-builts and 18
switchers. As Barriger left FM in spring 1946 to become president
of the newly reorganized Chicago,Indianapolis & Louisville
railroad(the Monon), V. H. Peterson moved in. to put together the
FM sales and service organization that pre- vailed to the end of
our story. Under Peterson's leadership, Jack Weiffenbach formed
the engineering group to design the C-Line, the successor to the
Erie-built locomotives.
When "Pete" came on board, FM was already facing the
consequences of being the newest builder and of having stubbed
its toe on the UP. There was no way FM could compete head to head
with EMD's production juggernaut at La Grange. But Pete found,
among other assets, that FM's small locomotive engineering group
at Beloit had had the foresight to understand that. They had not
been convinced that FM would become a second EMD through the Erie
locomotive program, and they had laid out design of two
locomotives which they thought could be sold into several niches
in. the vast locomotive market--locomotives which could be built
at Beloit with minimum investment in new manufacturing
facilities.
In their view, big-carbody A and B units were not
cost-effective when it came down to moving trains, and they
foresaw the dominance of the hood type locomotive in road freight
service. They argued that FM needed a strictly utilitarian. plain
Jane freight unit which could be built readily in the small
locomotive erection building soon to be opened at Beloit.
Authority was given to proceed, and they came up with two
locomotives: a 1500 h.p,. four-axle road-switcher for both
freight and passenger work, and a 2000 h.p., four-axle hood type
that looked very much like an overgrown yard switcher.
The one that caught the eye immediately was that 2000 h.p.
unit, in later years known as the H20-44. When the prototype came
out of the shop in its garish red-orange paint with white
pin-stripes, heading for the 1947 AAR show at Atlantic City, it
was definitely FM's bid to be first in producing the motive-
power type that would dominate the scene when the day of the
streamliner was over. It was the very first single-engine
diesel-electric hood type freight locomotive in the U.S. with a
B-B wheel arrangement to be rated at 2000 h.p., and it was on the
rails about 14 years before such units were produced by EMD and
GE for dieseldom's second generation.
At the Atlantic City show. reading left to right, we had the
new 1500 h.p. road-switcher in bright green, the back-to-back
canary-yellow A units for Union-Pacific. and the red-orange 2000
h.p. unit which by that time had been given a name--the Heavy
Duty. Although the big yellow UP's were the centerpiece of the
entire rolling-stock exhibit, the Heavy Duty got the play. Union
Pacific bought it right off the showroom floor and followed up
with an order for 10 more. UP wanted them for helper service over
Cajon Pass and on eastward from Barstow up to Kelso, Calif. It
was an ideal spot for plain, simple power packaged at 2000 h.p.
per copy.
Coming out of the Atlantic City show, the Heavy Duty made two
clean sweeps in becoming the sole road motive power for both the
Pittsburgh & West Virginia and the Akron. Canton & Youngstown.
Over a period of several years. P&WV bought 22 of them, pairing
them up as 4000 h.p. locomotives. The smaller AC&Y needed only
six to replace its roster of light Mikado steam locomotives in
its connecting service across the middle tier of Ohio.
But acceptance of the Heavy Duty was spotty. Despite a
notable demonstration of Indiana Harbor Belt witnessed by
representatives of nearly all the western roads headquartered in
Chicago, none of them translated what they had observed into
serious consideration of how the Heavy Duty might fit into their
train service needs. But IHB and one of its owners, NYC. were
impressed, and the Central purchased 19 of them for the Harbor.
Thus did FM's H20-44 begin its work right in EMD's back yard!
The Pennsylvania Railroad had observed the IHB demonstration,
and the Pennsy had also seen something of how the units were
working out on the P&WV. PRR had plenty of jobs for units like
that. and so placed an initial order for 12, followed within a
year by a big repeat order for 26. That was FM's third largest
single order for locomotives, and, like the big order for
Erie-builts in 1947, it was the order for which FM's locomotive
shop at Beloit reached its highest level of productivity.
But then, when just 96 units had been sold, acceptance and
demand for the H20-44 ended. To understand what flawed the
acceptance of this first 2000 h.p. road-switcher, it is
instructive to look at both the hardware and the market. The
utility and adaptability of a single locomotive that can operate
with either end forward was hardly a new concept. Straight
electrics had all been built that way, and there had been a few
steam-locomotive adaptations to get that quick turnaround
feature, such as the 4-6-4T's for Boston & Albany's commuter
trains in Boston. As diesel-electric road-switchers came into the
picture. the high availability and the ease of turning such units
were perceived to be essential for getting maximum eco- nomic
benefits out of the new locomotives. Nor was there anything new
about a road locomotive having switchmen's footboards for the use
of the brakemen when doing switching moves incidental to freight
operations. Thousands of road freight steam locomotives had been
fitted with such footboards, including the Pennsy Mla and NYC L-2
4-8-2's. FM. Alco, and Baldwin had rightly perceived the broad
utility of that feature of road freight diesel power. The term
"road-switcher" may have been a demeaning misnomer. The hood
types we are talking about here were. and are. road locomotives
which happen to have the added convenience of the full-width
footboard.
Possibly because of the reluctance of the railroads to buy
the hood types in 1946-1947, EMD introduced its BLl 1 and BL2
units (BL for branch line, as I recall which were modified A
units having cab visibility in both directions. The complexity of
the framework and of the exterior sheathing of the BL's looked
expensive. and there were obvious compromises with good access to
the engine for maintenance. The BL's were possibly the one
instance in which EMD misread the market. In a couple of years.
EMD had given up on the BL2, quickly joining and taking the drive
lead in the hood parade with the GP7.
As the market for carbody units approached saturation, and
when EMD introduced the GP7, the hood type's all-around utility
became the dominant consideration in selecting new motive power.
In that circumstance. the H20-44 ought to have been a winner.
That the opposite was true, however, apparently stemmed from the
fact that the unit had no dynamic braking and no short hood for
train-heating equipment (or for the illusory concept that the
short hood was protection for the crew). And of course. 2000 h.p.
had a slightly higher pricetag than did 1500 h.p., all else being
equal. The stripped down basics of the H20-44's design had made
it the best buy around in terms of dollars per horsepower, but
the missing short hood and the rating of 500 h.p. per axle. both
out of step with the accepted norms of those years, made the
model difficult to sell. The phasing out of that unit was simply
a response to the trend of the times. It is very hard to faillt
FM as having misread the market for the basic concept of the H20.
What the builder misread were matters of detail which foreclosed
the future of this lively unit just at the time when it might
have become the one to beat. The success some years later of
EMD's 2000 h.p. GP20 and then GE's 2500 h.p. U25B surely bears
that out.
Back in 1946-1947, when railroad-men were still slow to
realize the broad appropriateness of the hood type locomotive, FM
found very few takers for its 1500 h.p. road-switcher, which
later became known as the H15-44. In 1947. FM delivered two, to
Barriger's Monon. where they went into a general locomotive pool
populated mainly by 1500 h.p. Alco RS2 hood units and EMD F3's
and BL2's. In 1948, three H15's went to Denver & Rio Grande
Westem, five to Union Pacific, and two to Rock Island; Central of
New Jersey took the 1947 demonstrator. making a total of only 11
that year.
Finding niches for the H15 was the name of the game, and we
worked at it from a lot of angles. The two Rock Island units were
a case in point. They were almost custom-built units, being FM's
first to be built for fully double-ended operation; they had dual
sets of, throttle, reverse lever and air brake valves so the
engineman could be seated on the right-hand side facing forward
no matter which way the locomotive was headed. For commuter
trains, those units were equipped with multi- ple-unit controls
and 24RL air-brake schedules with electro-pneumatic braking
control capability--the most elabo- rately equipped units of that
class ever to roll out of the Beloit factory.
They also held the dubious distinction of having been sold
over the explicit objections of the customer--a contradiction
that needs explanation. Rock Island was in receivership. and its
corporate affairs were conducted under the authority of a court
and two court-appointed trustees. The trustees dis-agreed about
the appropiiateness of buying diesels for commuter trains when
the Rock Island was still struggling to find money to buy
mainline power, new freight cars, and much else needed to
modernize its primary business. The trustee, who would soon be-
come the reorganized Rock Island's new president, was the one who
was opposed to buying the FM locomotives, with the consequence
that some of us found ourselves, by circumstance and certainly
not by choice, in opposition to that trustee during the court
hearings. When the court ruled in favor of buying the
locomotives, we had an order . . . and a hostile customer.
STANDARDIZATlON AND STARTING OVER
Following those early lean years, the 1500 h.p. and 1600 h.p.
hoods became FM's second biggest seller. Only the popular yard
switchers sold more units. In fact, the H15's and successor H16's
were restrained as much by logjams in the production schedules as
they were by FM's competitors. One of the reasons for the logjams
was that FM did not-and perhaps, in all fairness. could not-copy
EMD's formula for success: i.e.. building just a few models. The
student of the evolution, of the EMD F unit. from F3 through F9,
for example, will notice that EMD model changes retained a great
deal of inter-changeability with earlier models. By contrast, the
only type with which FM succeeded in following EMD's rulebook
throughout its 19 years of building locomotives was the yard
switcher. Although that type went through almost constant
metamorphosis in round after round of cost-reduction revisions,
the trucks and the traction motors of the first one built in 1944
could have been used on the last one built in 1961.
The first major change in what we know know as the H10-44 was
to get rid of the cast steel bed frame and to put the fabrication
of the frame in the home shop where it belonged. The second
well-known move was to substitute FM-designed and built
generators, traction motors and D.C. auxiliaries for the
Westinghouse equipment. The change was accomplished without loss
of inter-changeability with the Westinghouse equipment, and it
put a very large chunk of manufacturing equity in the home plant
at Beloit. Gradually the engimeers and the shop lopped off
styling details and "nice-to-have" but nonessential items, and
all the while the H10-44 and H12-44 series kept the basic model
identity. FM built 501 of these at Beloit and 30 of them in
Canada--a classic example of how to build a standard locomotive
model.
But with its road power, FM broke the rules. To begin with,
the cut-off of the Erie program was disastrous. Just at the time
when FM needed a smoothly functioning production line to back up
its sales work, just when FM's competition was getting into full
stride, FM was forced to:
Close down a production line.
Abandon its only carbody type locomotive design.
Invest money and time in developing a new carbody type
locomotive model. Build, man, and organize a large expansion of
its locomotive shop at Beloit.
It was like dropping the baton in a relay-you never overtake
the ones who kept on running!
FM's other good start in this regard had to be abandoned too.
The use of common components in the H15-44 and H20-44 had been
straight out of EMD's book--same trucks, same traction motors,
same traction motor blowers and motors, same basic cooling sys-
tem anangement. Further, of course. all of the strictly railroad
vehicle items such as air brakes, compressors, couplers and draft
gears were completely interchsulgeable between the two models.
But there was very little in those models that met the design
criteria set up by the Chicago based engineering group that would
design the new carbody type locomotive. Whether such rejections
may have been carried to unnecessarily extreme lengths I cannot
say. The fact remains that the designers of the new locomotives
began with the OP engines, the traction motors, a few of the
accessories, the cellterline, and a blank sheet of paper. It
seems ironic that when Henry Schmidt laid down the basic concepts
for consolidating seven carbody locomotive models into one basic
design, thus implementing what FM so geatly needed. he found that
he had to scrap almost everything that had been done up to that
time.
Schmidt's objective was right on for FM's relative size in
the market, but his approach had one flaw about which he could do
nothing: It was late--about 5 years late, to put a number on it.
THE C-LINE
Henry's name for the locomotive he had crafted, "The
Consolidation Line," became "C-Line" about 30 seconds affer he
suggested it. It was an outstanding design-a full 8 feet shorter
than the Erie-built units, and yet housing a 12- cylinder OP
engine, generator, dynamic braking, a 4500-pound-per-hour-capaci-
ty steam generator, and commensurate water and fuel tanks to give
it adequate range. It could be ally one of three horsepower
ratings. and there would be three freight models and four
passenger models. FM went out to sell the locomotive that could
be exactly what the customer wanted.
The C-Line engineering group gave birth to a new four-wheel
truck design that became the standard. The selection of FM-built
A.C. electrical equipment for the radiator fans and
traction-motor blower drives carried through in like form on all
subsequent road locomotives, just one of the changes that
required a complete redesign of the H16-44 in 1951. The new
Westinghouse main generators were standard from then on until
Westinghouse stopped making them. and much of the C-Line engine
load regulation system and other controls and switch gear were
used in the other models. Jack Weiffellbach's group had fulfilled
their mandate--they had set up a family of standards in the FM
locomotive line. But by the time FM had a clear shot at the
production-line advantages of all this standardization. the
market had crested. The bonanza had passed FM by.
That was in the U.S. In Canada. where the first
diesel-electric road locomotives in North America had made a
brief appearance on the Canadian National in 1928, full-scale
dieselization was just getting under way. General Motors was
building a new locomotive factory at London, Ontario. Montreal
Locomotive Works, drawing upon the Dominion Eagineering Works to
build Alco diesel engines and upon Canadian GE for electricals,
would meet the GM challenge with Canadian-built Alcos. Canadian
Locomotive Company at Kingston, Ont., linked to Baldwin by stock
ownership, was going nowhere-until FM entered the picture with an
offer to buy Baldwin's interest. The deal was consummated in the
spring of the year, roughly coinciding with the roll-out of the
first C-Line locomotives at Beloit.
George Mueller came from Hamilton Diesel to take charge at
Kingston. He quickly recruited key people from FM, notably Jack
Weiffenbach, to head up the operations at CLC. Although a high
content of the CLC units was imported from the U.S., the Canadian
company fabricated the locomotive vehicle and engine crnakcase
and performed all assembly and testing, becomig almost as
complete in scope as Beloit. Mueller forged ahead with tremendous
drive. undeterred by a warning offered by C. P. Newman of
Canadian Pacific in June 1950 that in all likelihooa Canada could
not support three locomotive builders. But George ran into the
truth of that prophecy. To tide the company over a long dry
spell, he brought in a big order from India for some classy 4-6-2
steam locomotives. CLC's 206 FM units looked like a fair showing
in the circumstances, but may have been a trifle short of the
numbers the directors had in mind when they voted to buy the
Canadian company.
In the U.S. and Canada, a total of 165 C-Lines were sold. Of
these, 120 were 1600 h.p. units--90 freight and 30 passenger. The
Pennsy took 24 freight, NYC 12, and Milwaukee 18. The 66 in
Canada were split almost evenly between freight (36) and
passenger (30). CP bought 10 freight and 18 passenger, CN 26
freight and 12 passenger. The relatively good acceptance of the
1600 h.p. C-Line so late in the game invites the speculation of
how well that unit would have sold had it been ready in 1945.
Forty-five of the higher powered C-Lines were sold: 15 2000
h.p. freight units to NYC to join the Eries on the Boston &
Albany: 8 2000 h.p. passenger units to the Long Island; and 22 of
the queen of the line. the CPA24-5 2400 h.p. passenger, divided 8
to NYC, 10 to New Haven, and 4 to Long Island.
Of seven possibilities. FM picked the 2400 h.p. passenger
unit for demonstration, building two of them to begin operations
in April 1950. It was the right choice. Its lower overall weight
with somewhat higher weight on drivers made it the top
performance passenger unit in the business, a point that FM
successfully demonstrated on the roads that bought them.
NYC sent a CPA24-5 demonstrator out of Cincinnati on its
James Whitconb RiLey to Chicago, and the streamliner came in on
time. It was typical of the CP24's capability, and in that case,
it showed that this hot little unit could match an NYC class J-ld
Hudson type.
Yes, those handsome units could deliver a snappy performance.
But unfortunately, it was too good to be true all of the time.
There was a fundamental problem that showed up at high speed at
times, and it occurred more than just once or twice when running
with some of the big name trains of the New York Central. The
CP24's experienced destructive electrical flashovers--something
like having the main generator struck by lightning. Evidently, in
designing the No. 498 main generator which was used on both the
2000 h.p. and 2400 h.p. units, Wes- tinghouse had based the
design on the premise that the 2400 h.p. transmission would
operate up to exceptionally high voltages-much higher than was
common practice with EMD aad GE electricals. When a C-Line unit
had a wheel slip at high speed-not an uncommon thing to have
happen on some stretches of the NYC main line in early morning
honrs of spring or fall when dew lies heavy on the rails--the
resulting transient effects in the main power circuits upset the
equilibrium in the main generator and caused the flashovers. It
was a problem so basic that the CP24 could not be extracted from
it without derating the units to skirt the trouble. And to the
extent that that was done, to that same extent the CP24's faded
from the scene of first-line power.
Long after that became apparent, the 1600 h.p. C-Lines
continued to sell, especially in Canada. The numbers tell the
story almost well enough, except that hidden in there somewhere
was the amazing picture of the newcomer to the business. the one
with the smallest business volume to support its venture, taking
the risk of probing thc future. It was a hallmark of Fairbanks,
Morse & Co. in the locomotive business to try the untried: the
Erie-built freights, the H20-44, the 2400 h.p. C-Lines. What
would come next?