Customer Reviews

Evolution of the American Diesel Locomotive (Railroads Past and Present)

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There's not much available about the development of Diesel locomotives, so this book does fill a big gap in the literature, at which it is fairly good. However it could have been a lot better. The author doesn't seem to have interviewed anyone with the railroads or with the builders, and he missed some important seconday sources (in particular, Churella's From Steam to Diesel, a really brilliant book). There are lots of omissions. In two sentences he mentions that EMD had two stroke cycle engines, but he never explains why, nor does he discuss the relative merits of two stroke versus four stroke. He doesn't really explain the reasons for transition. Nor does he discuss the merits of two versus three motor trucks. For an engineering professor, he didn't give us much engineering background. There are no diagrams of a Diesel engine, nor of the total locomotive. He ignored EMD's vastly superior service, support, and parts logistics which led to the downfall of other competitors, and then he doesn't explain GE's current predominance.

I was looking for this book to know more about evolution of North American locomotives. This history is clear and well illustrated (mainly black and white roster shots).

Pros :

- no roster list per railroad

- one pictures for each model

Cons :

- no charts nor diagram

- modern time (from SD40-2 to Green Goats) only 21 pages !

To conclude, it's a good book that reads fast but it would have been better with more technical details and charts and more developement abour moder locomotives.