Just read an interesting article from the January, 1986 issue of Trains. The author deals with the relative maintenance costs between models from different diesel locomotive builders (1st generation) based on the experience of the New York Central RR. These were for road locomotives, yard switchers were not included. If you express the average annual maintenance cost of an EMD locomotive as unity (1.0), the other builders lined up as follows: Alco - 1.5x Baldwin - 3.0x F-M - 4.0x Lima - So high that after the first couple of major engine rebuilds, they repowered them with EMD 567's. I think the Frisco had better experience than that with Baldwin and F-M, but all the SLSF's were switchers. Easy to see why EMD became dominant in the 1st generation era. Today, my impression is that the GE's would be at 1.0, while the EMD's maybe at 1.1x or 1.2x. GE has made great strides since the U25b showed up. FYI. Ken
