Steam & Excursion > The Diesel Salesman Did Not Always Succeed With His Sales Pitch!

We tend to forget that the diesel salesmen of the 1940's and early 1950's did not have the easiest job when it came to selling their product at some railroads in this country.

The product he was selling was very expensive compared to the steam power that was already in service on these lines and the track improvements needed to support the diesel units only added to the initial costs involved in the sale. So it was not always an easy sell for even the best salesmen of the diesel locomotive.

One such attempt to sell a railroad on these new diesels took place at the Northern Redwood Lumber Company at Korbel, California. We see in this fine photo by Stan Borden, the NRL shop crew inspecting the Baldwin Diesel demonstrator that the Baldwin salesmen John Kirkwood has brought to demonstrate.

Sitting next to the shiny new Baldwin diesel we see NRL 3-truck Shay #5 that has recently been purchased used from the Yosemite Lumber Co. of Merced, California. This Shay was cheap to buy compared to the diesel being demonstrated on this day. Also, the Shay was easy on the NRL trackage and did not cause any track upgrades.

The Baldwin salesmen had the NRL crews take the diesel out too the woods and back t bring out empties and bring in loads of logs for a couple days. While the crews liked what they saw, the NRL management did not spring for the extra costs involved with the Baldwin Diesel and the salesmen went away this day without a sale.

Steam has won out here for the time being. Such would not always be the case.

Martin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/17 03:21 by LoggerHogger.

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The Diesel had the split knuckle coupler while the Shay had a solid knuckle. The Safety Appliance Act only required automatic couplers on cars that carry commerce in interstate and foreign traffic. Private railroad did not carry interstate commerce, as logs, in this case were not commerce. A waybill was required on commerce traffic. The Baldwin was ready to pull link-and-pit cars or even link to MofW cars on common-carrier railroad. The first legal test case of someone getting his hand injured linking a locomotive to a train under the SAA was ruled that the locomotive and tender was not covered by the SAA because they did not carry interstate commerce. The caboose was the only company private car that was covered by the SAA as it was included in the diagrams of safety appliances placements. Locomotives can still have link-and-pin couplers and be legal to SAA. This was confirmed by the late Jerry Fisher, who worked for the FTA and ruled on the requests to the FRA for exceptions. He knew the laws inside out. (That was the same Jerry Fisher who put in the application to operate the Cumbres & Toltec RR and then went ballistic when the railroad just assigned the operation to the "Friends" without considering any of the applications. Jerry Fisher then shut the RR down for unstable right of way in revenge. The FRA had no jurisdiction over narrow gage track but had a safety clause which J. Fisher applied.)

This might be one of the last application of split knuckles to new engines coming out of the builders.

The Shay also has a split knuckle coupler.

Martin

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Now that's a very rare photo.

PlyWoody Wrote:
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> This might be one of the last application of split
> knuckles to new engines coming out of the
> builders.

What makes you think it came from Baldwin with that knuckle?
It's only a 10 minute job to change a knuckle at the shop.

Pretty unlikely that Baldwin shipped it that way as the demonstrator worked more than just that one line.

Out

Similar happening on the Sierra RR. Baldwin diesel demoed on the line, but the salesman left without making a sale. Not too long later, Sierra purchased 2-6-6-2 #38. The Baldwin diesel salesman did return to the Sierra RR later on, and did leave having successfully sold two diesels to the road.

A knuckle is just that. It takes 5 minutes to change them out and can be done by one man. My guess, they wanted to show the diesel was like the steam engine as far as knuckles go and have an assortment to choose to from on board.



Nudge

Lynn:

In between the first attempts by Baldwin to sell "smoking boxes" to the Sierra and the final sale of the two S12's, the main change was that a the management changed. Bill Cogdon passed away and Bill was a strong supporter of steam over diesel. It was he who brought in the #38, to "bump" the #28 off her spot in the regular roster. Condon's replacement didn't care about steam and quickly moved the Sierra to switch to the heartless, droning, heartless boxes some people call diesels.

John

sixbit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lynn:
>
> In between the first attempts by Baldwin to sell
> "smoking boxes" to the Sierra and the final sale
> of the two S12's, the main change was that a the
> management changed. Bill Cogdon passed away and
> Bill was a strong supporter of steam over diesel.
> It was he who brought in the #38, to "bump" the
> #28 off her spot in the regular roster. Condon's
> replacement didn't care about steam and quickly
> moved the Sierra to switch to the heartless,
> droning, heartless boxes some people call
> diesels.
>
> John

Heartless? Diesels have souls, different then what a steam locomotive has, but they have one and each one is unique.

John Kirkland was the sales and service manager for Baldwin’s Western Region and was involved with most of Baldwin’s diesel locomotive sales in the area. He was quite the railfan and shot some high quality 16mm movies of the diesels that he sold and of the steam locomotives that they replaced.

I believe that the slotted knuckles are a result of Baldwin’s merger with Lima. After the merger the San Francisco warehouse had an inventory of parts for Shay locomotives and it was Mr. Kirkland’s task to sell what was on hand. I know that in the mid 1970’s the Sierra Railroad still had a number of these knuckles on hand in Oakdale as replacements for the locomotives and the caboose.

The Sierra Railroad was very interested in purchasing diesel locomotives and as mentioned one demonstrated on the Sierra in the early 1950s. At that time the Sierra did not have the finances to make the purchase. Instead they shopped around and ended up with the 38 as a stopgap until they could afford the diesels. By the end of 1954 Sierra was in a position to purchase the diesels for $125,000.00 each. At the time of his death in August 1954 Sierra Master Mechanic Bill Tremewan was scheduled to be trained by Baldwin on diesel locomotive maintenance. These locomotives represented a sizable savings to the Sierra by making it possible for the Oakdale crew to make a daily round trip to Tuolumne and eliminating the need for the Jamestown – Tuolumne job.

Bill Tremewan’s death left the Sierra in need of a Master Mechanic. John Kirkland recommended Jim Condon for the job. Mr. Condon had been a Baldwin service representative and by 1955 Baldwin was phasing these positions out. Mr. Condon was hired and was responsible for setting up the locomotives and the diesel shop in Oakdale.

Dave Sell



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/17 17:37 by DGS.

Other photos I'm finding of demonstrators 750 and 751 appear to show slotted coupler knuckles:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3226140,3226143#3226143
http://baldwindiesels.railfan.net/guide/ds-4-4-750/ds-4-4-750.jpg

The builder's photo of the #750 and #751 clearly show the units to have been fitted with the slotted knuckles upon their release from the factory. A quick look through Kirkland's Diesel Builders Volume 3 book on Baldwins show a large number of new diesels equipped with the slotted knuckles in that time period. The list of railroads over which these demonstrators worked includes Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company, Fruit Growers Supply Company, Longview Portland & Northern, McCloud River, Medford Corporation, Northern Redwood Lumber Company, Northwestern Pacific, Pacific Electric, Pacific Lumber Company, Sierra, Southern Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, Willamina & Grande Ronde, Valley & Siletz, and Yreka Western. It's also interesting to note these two were built near the end of the DS-4-4-750 production run and were primarily intended to generate interest in the new S-series switchers that replaced the DS models in Baldwin's catalogue.

To the Sierra, on 4 February 1950 the president of the Sierra Railroad wrote the following letter to P.N. Myers, then president of the McCloud River Railroad: "I have given considerable thought and study to the advantages of diesel power over steam on our operations. We worked a Baldwin 1500 H.P. four traction job a year ago for four days and recently the American Locomotive Company made a cost study and recommendation for conversion...You have been operating a diesel unit, replacing steam, under conditions closely resembling our operation. I would appreciate any information you could furnish me as to what your experience has been, such as comparative costs of fuel, repairs, etc....From the short operation of the diesel on this line, fuel oil costs appear to be the large item of saving. This saving will be materially decreased if fuel oil prices continue to drop". Myers' response letter back indicated McCloud was having great success with its recently arrived #28, that it was doing the work of two steam locomotives, and McCloud's estimates showed direct operational costs had been reduced from $85,358.85 with the steam to $50,907.36 with the diesel. My understanding based on what I've read here and there in the past is that Sierra really wanted to buy diesels in 1950, but could not so do because the road's financial position would not allow for it, and the experience with the #38 was largely done to give them time to come up with the cash for the new power.

One final note to Martin's post, by 1950 it had become clear most logging railroad operations were going to be phased out in favor of trucks sooner than later anyway. Diesels really didn't make a whole lot of sense unless you were going to have enough time to write them down or you expected a significant resale value. In the case of Northern Redwood, they pulled up their logging railroad in 1956, right after Simpson bought the operations. Martin's posted pictures before of Arcata & Mad River's 65-ton Whitcomb #103 in log train duty, indicating that diesels did get at least some use on this logger before it ended.

Thanks for posting this picture...

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV