1958 - Farewell to Steam on the N&W

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As Jim Nichols pointed out, these locomotives only needed to cover 
the pre-merger N&W.

According to the article, the 268 were to be added to the 198 that 
the N&W already had. This would make a total of 466 diesels. What I 
found interesting was that they were planning to use the remaining 
serviceable mileage on 60 steam locomotives even after buying enough 
to completely dieselize operations. I imagine that someone realized 
that maintaining those last 60 was going to cost more than the value 
of those remaining miles.

Another way to view this is that the N&W bought 268 diesels to 
replace 262 steam locomotives. One of the chief benefits of diesels 
is their higher availability, that is they spend less time in the 
shop being maintained. If the diesels were more available, then why 
did it take more of them to do the same job? Because the N&W steam 
locomotives more than made up for their extra time in the shop by 
working harder, pulling more tonnage per engine than their younger 
diesel counterparts.

It would be interesting to compare the gross annual ton-miles of the 
1958 N&W versus today's Norfolk Southern. Can someone share those 
figures with us?

Ron Davis

At 09:24 AM 7/4/2008, you wrote:

>What I found especially interesting about this post, however, was 

>that 268 diesels were considered enough to handle all the traffic on 

>the system.  Compare this with NS today, which has several thousand 

>units, and almost all of then with much higher horsepower than any 

>available in 1958.

>

>Kenneth Rickman