Morgan had it wrong

Still dead weight pulled by a powerful locomotive. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I have subscribed to Trains Magazine since 1966, which is the year I graduated college.
Which makes me what magazines call a “constant reader.”
I don’t remember if I subscribed while in college, or after; but I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2 — I’m 70.
I subscribed because of David P. Morgan, who was editor at that time.
He’s a railfan much like me, and communicated the drama of railroading, which is why I’m a railfan.
Morgan retired in 1987, then died in 1990.
Trains went through a few editors after Morgan, some moribund.
Now they’re in pretty good hands, although it’s not Morgan.
I don’t read cover-to-cover any more; I don’t have time.
I try to read what interests me, but even then I may not have time.
Not long ago I read writings of David P. Morgan in Trains of the 1960s, a magazine-format special put out by Classic Trains Magazine.
It reminded me of some of the things Morgan wrote about, which I consider because they never came true.
Morgan liked the propositions of his columnist John Kneiling, an iconoclastic engineer who wanted changes in railroading.
And Knieling made sense, or so it seemed, with his proposal that every freightcar be self-powered, taking advantage of its heavy load to get traction.
This ends the practice of dragging dead weight with a powerful locomotive, what railroads have always done, and still do.
Kneiling proposed having a separate power-source in the train, and then wiring the power throughout the train.
Made sense to me, and also Morgan.
But there are problems:
—1) Railroads have a hard enough time maintaining an integral air-line throughout the train for brakes.
I monitor a railroad-radio scanner, and occasionally a train reports it’s “gone into emergency” (stopped) because of an air-leak.
Couple together 100 or more freightcars and you have potential for an air-leak. Not just at the coupling-hoses, but also within the cars themselves.
100 or more wiring connections beg failure.
If anything can go wrong, it will.
Everything from the disconnect on goes dead, and the train stalls.
Years ago my wife-and-I rode Amtrak’s Silver Meteor to visit her parents in Florida.
We got on in Wilmington, DE, and the train had head-end power; that is, the train-cars got their electricity from the locomotive.
About 10 minutes after we got on, the power-cord from the locomotive unplugged, and we rode all the way to Baltimore, our next stop, in the dark.
In Baltimore the cord was replugged, but five minutes after leaving it came unplugged again.
We rode all the way into Washington DC in the dark.
We rode Auto-Train a few years later without incident, but I worry about power-transfer through cords.
Not to mention that cord has to be pretty heavy to power 100 or more traction-motors.
—2) Doing traction-motors for the nation’s entire freightcar fleet is a monstrous investment. I suppose it could be done piecemeal with a power-cord from the locomotive to the traction-motored cars.
But even that would be a monstrous investment. Unpowered freightcars have to be wired to pass along power to the traction-motor cars. Or segregated, wired cars from unwired cars.
Traction-motored cars are a nice idea, and I can see it happening some day.
But not right now, and probably not initiated by the rail-industry.
I’m more inclined to expect some shipper to try it — shippers have already tried electric brake-activation.
—I remember during the ‘60s passenger-service from Washington DC up to New York City was planned with individually-powered coaches, much like commuter-coaches, except they could do 150 mph.

The lead car of a New York-Washington express.

I think this was actually instituted; I’ve added a photo at left.
But since then Amtrak, which took on railroad passenger service from the railroads in 1971, has gone back to locomotive-pulled trains. Dead weight coaches pulled by locomotives, just like it’s always been.
And the self-powered express coaches were getting their power from an overhead wire, not a power-cord.
Morgan was a great writer, but he got it wrong following Kneiling. Kneiling’s unit-train concept of long trains of only a single commodity, e.g. coal, which ran point-to-point, including through classification yards, was adopted by the railroads.
But those unit-trains are still dead weight pulled by a powerful locomotive.

• The lede photograph is the Norfolk Southern Monongahela heritage-unit pulling a unit-train of loaded crude-oil tankcars through South Fork, PA.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.