BRIEF HISTORY
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 �Itour 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 �IOlympian Hiawatha� trains. The road was at the beginning of dieselization and was moving to build on the success of the famous �IHiawatha� 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 �IOlympian� . 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?More F-M Information © S.A. McCall