John F. Kirkland Books

[meteor910]

FYI - after some delay due to travel, today I finished reading John F. Kirkland's book "The Diesel Builders, Vol 1, Fairbanks-Morse and Lima-Hamilton". Kirkland's books are very detail oriented, lots of data on the engines and transmissions, etc - the kind of stuff I like.

I had always thought the minor diesel builders - Baldwin, F-M, Lima-Hamilton, were overwhelmed by EMD and, to a lesser extent, Alco and later on, GE. I thought EMD and Alco won their leading market share because their stuff was better than that supplied by the other firms.

Not so according to Kirkland (he does have an anti-EMD bias, as he was a Baldwin guy). EMD and Alco won their huge combined market share because - they did indeed build good products, but mainly because they got there first, and thus their products actualy defined the diesel locomotive market. Many of the sales that went to the minority builders were made because EMD and Alco were sold out.

But, per Kirkland, the F-M and Lima designs were very well thought out, were well engineered, and were of high quality - certainly equal to EMD & Alco, and, after the Alco 244 arrived, superior to Alco. The problem was they were late to market, and did not have the production capacity of the big two. Also, EMD F's, E's, NW's, SW's and Alco S's and RS's actualy defined the locomotive types as well.

Baldwin was successful with the VO's - they also got there at the start, but their later types were not successful. F-M and L-H were just plain late to the party.

The Baldwin's, F-M's and Lima's were OK, but suffered maintenance headaches because ..... they were different. And, they were totally outnumbered. The Frisco actually liked their F-M's, but wisely concentrated them around Tulsa so they could build a unique maintenance expertise there.

Kirkland points out the F-M locomotive effort was in the black in total at the time they decided to do other things. He also notes the Lima-Hamilton diesel locomotive plant in Lima, OH was the most efficient production line of any of the builders, and L-H did the best job of using common parts and sub-assemblies in their designs.

A good read! On to volume 2 - Alco. I look forward to his comments about the Alco 244 engine!

Ken