-=> Quoting Rick Jones to Bob Wingender <=-
 RJ> Well...any railroads east of the Mississippi Valley are really
 RJ> irrelevant anyway.    ];-{)
 
 -> They tried but it wasn't to feasible to convert to oil due to the
 -> firebox that the BigBoy has.
 RJ> Why is that? I was surprised to notice that the Big Boy at the
 RJ> Fairplex was coal, as I thought that all new steam engines by
 RJ> that time were oil burners. You can tell I haven't studied the
 RJ> historical side of things in depth since a generic feel is
 RJ> usually good enough for my modeling. 
        Coal was used in many, perhaps the majority, of new steam
engines constructed up to the very end of steam locomotive
construction.  The coal vs. oil decision was strictly an economic
one, depending on costs of the fuels and nearness to sources.
        In addition, some railroads which hauled a lot of coal
thought their biggest customers would take unkindly to their not
supporting them, and that it would hurt the entire economies of
their regions if those railroads stopped using that coal.
        Of course, those are the very places usually that were
near to coal sources and where the costs were in favor of coal,
so the decision was not a difficult one as long as steam
locomotives were still considered a viable technology. 
    
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR]
--- WILDMAIL!/WC v4.12 
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