Locomotives

Built for Northern Pacific Railroad, built by American Locomotive Co., the most powerful locomotive in the world will soon be completed. Generating 6,000 horsepower, it could pull, over a level track, a train two miles long. For its thirst it requires 14,400 gallons of water per hour; for its hunger, 20 tons of coal in the same period. Its firebox is the size of a portable garage. With its tender, it weighs one million pounds and is as long as half a city block. Designed chiefly for work on steep grades, it will haul across the Rockies trains that now creep slowly onward with the aid of two engines in front and a third in the rear. It will go into commission about the first of the year.

In spite of this best and biggest trainpuller, however, the U. S. locomotive industry is now completing its poorest year in recent history. Locomotives are a drug on the market. During the first seven months of 1928, U. S. railroads placed orders for only 171 locomotives.-But Baldwin Locomotive Works alone can build 3,000 locomotives a year. The railroads are not in the market for any new equipment that they can get along without, and they can easily get along without new locomotives. For they have now in storage some 6,900 engines. Many of these engines are aged, inefficient; but most of them are still able to pull trains.

The foreign trade situation is as discouraging as the domestic. During the first six months of 1928, U. S. locomotive works had shipped to foreign countries only 75 locomotives. Even this meager figure represented a rapidly falling market. On Aug. 1, 1928, U. S. locomotive builders were constructing 73 locomotives for foreign roads. On Aug. 1, 1927, they had been building 209 such locomotives, and on Aug. 1, 1926, there were 517 U. S. locomotives under construction for the export trade. Thus the 1928 export production has shrunk to about one-seventh of its 1926 figure.

There are only three U. S. manufacturers of locomotives. They are American Locomotive Co., Baldwin Locomotive Works and Lima Locomotive Works, Inc. The Lima company is so much smaller than the other two that the locomotive industry is often thought of in terms only of American Locomotive and Baldwin. All three companies are running at far below capacity (the Lima plant, indeed, shut down temporarily during the latter part of 1927).

Sharp contrasts are William H. Woodin, head of the American Locomotive Co., and Samuel M. Vauclain, head of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Mr. Woodin has probably the finest collection of American gold pieces in the world, has written authoritatively on numismatics. A collector of rare books, he especially prizes a volume which contains signatures of most of the Popes of Rome. A present hobby is the collection of originals of newspaper cartoons. Mr. Woodin plays little golf; seldom uses his costly yacht. He is a graduate of Columbia (school of mines, 1890) and an Alpha Delta Phi, was Fuel Administrator in New York State during the coal strike of 1922, ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 1898 and though a life-long Republican, supported Governor Smith. He is 60. Believing strongly in self-control, he stops smoking one month each year to demonstrate that he is no tobacco-slave.

To Mr. Vauclain, on the other hand, a Pennsylvania Railroad roundhouse in Altoona was "nursery and kindergarten." He was roundhouse helper at 16; foreman at 21. He married at 23 on $8.40 a week. Among his hobbies are the writings of St. Paul and the construction of business letters. Mr. Vauclain is 68, rises at 6 a. m.

Far-sighted holders of locomotive stocks look to the electrification of U. S. railroads for the solution of the locomotive stagnation. Such holders beamed at the announcement, early in November (TIME, Nov. 12) that the Pennsylvania Railroad was planning to electrify 325 miles of line (1,300 miles of track) between Manhattan and Wilmington. Both American Locomotive and Baldwin have put themselves in a position to profit from an increase in electrified railroad mileage. In 1923 American Locomotive Co. concluded an agreement with General Electric for co-operation in the design and construction of electric locomotives. Meanwhile associations between Baldwin and Westinghouse have been so close that in October there were even rumors of a merger of the two companies.

It should be realized, however, that railway electrification is an extremely long and expensive process. An electric locomotive costs twice as much as a steam locomotive. Cautious, conservative, President Vauclain has said: "It is my opinion that considerable time must elapse and many millions of dollars be expended in the development of an oil-electric power unit in the shape of a locomotive before machines of this type will figure to any great extent in transportation service." Thus electrification represents a hope for the distant rather than the immediate future. As far as 1929, for example, is concerned, there would appear to be no great expectation of any considerable improvement. The locomotive industry is an accessory to the railroads just as the tire industry is an accessory to the automobile. Until railroad earnings themselves increase to a figure which will make unnecessary present economies in equipment-purchase, the locomotive industry must continue to suffer. Its capacity for building locomotives is far in excess of the demand for them.

* In August, 1928, New York Central commissioned American Locomotive Co. to build 55 locomotives. But this order is an isolated exception to the prevailing trend.