LIMA — As the railroad industry transitioned from steam locomotives to more efficient and advanced diesel engines much more was lost than the nostalgia of a friendly engineer’s wave or the brassy blare of a whistle.
“It gave the railroads an opportunity to get rid of the boilermakers, the machinists, the water department employees, the coal dock employees and the massive shops that were necessary to maintain a steam-powered locomotive,” said Scott Trostel, an author and railroad historian.
Trostel spoke Tuesday at the Allen County Museum about that transition and the far-reaching affect it had on all of post-war America. But Lima, which built what Trostel called the Cadillac of steam locomotives, was hit particularly hard.
“So much of the employment in the community was reliant on the railroads, and suddenly they didn’t need them,” he said.
Lima’s problems were twofold. Not only were fewer men needed for railroad jobs, but Lima Locomotive Works was unwilling and unable to give up on the dominance of steam.
“The philosophy of the business was such that ‘we build steam locomotives here; we don’t build diesels,’” Trostel said.
The company that built more than 7,000 steam locomotives would build fewer than 200 diesels.
“They understood the power of steam and they also understood the absolute power of steam had never been achieved, and they wanted to achieve that,” he said.
By the late 1950s, steam locomotives were relics. The end began long before that, however, with diesel electric engines proving their viability as early as the 1920s. The demands of World War II provided a brief reprieve for steam engines, but it also was a staging for diesel engine producers to make their move.
“It gave them time to plan,” Trostel said. “They knew how to change an entire industry. It was a leap forward in technology. They knew the day the war was over they would be able to do what needed to be done to make the steam locomotive, the iron horse, disappear from the American railway.”
Along with requiring fewer employees, diesels were cleaner, easier to repair and burned a fuel that was little more than a byproduct at the time. Steam didn’t have a chance.
Lima Locomotive Works made its last steam engine in 1949. Trostel said the company’s president walked out of a board meeting at the announcement steam was finished.
