A friend swears that it is common knowledge that GM killed rail electrification in the US by refusing to ship car parts or cars over electrified track. When I asked him what their motive was he said that they built the first diesel locomotives. Can anyone tell me if the latter is true and does anyone have any knowledge of the former? It is not that I have any love for GM but I don’t want to hate them any more than I already do without some evidence beyond what sounds to me like an urban myth. I am pretty well convinced that they destroyed the urban trolley for the most part (although trolley cars cost so much more than busses that I am not absolutely certain of that).
Would you consider 60 Minutes a cite? Well, I suppose it’s a start.
This was the subject of a segment they televised quite a few years ago. The 60 Minutes story specifically concentrated on the demise of the Los Angeles light rail system.
The big red LA Trolleys were apparently very well planned and were considered state of the art for public transportation. The story mentioned that civil engineers from Germany and Japan traveled to Los Angeles to study the system.
The 60 Minutes story asserted that GM of used pressure to destroy that line and all lines like it so they could be replaced by rubber tired buses (electric or not) built by…GM.
One of the GM policies was that once an area changed to buses the trolley tracks were to be ripped up immediately. There would be no going back.
I’ve often wondered about that too… but Cecil has a column on this here.
GM Electro-Motive Division is a major manufacturer of diesel locomotives, and has been for a long time. I don’t know if they can claim to be the first though - this page says it was General Electric who built the first commercial diesel locomotive.
Well, Cecil’s column denies even that GM dismanteled the trolleys. None of the answers addresses the question of electric locomotion, which is what I was interested in. Except to confirm that GM did build electric locomotives and quite early. But I would still like to know if GM shipping policies destroyed electrification of railroads. I had the impression that outside of the New Haven (now Boston) to Washington line and also Philadelphia to Harrisburg, there was never much electrification in the US.
My impression was that car and trucks stopping on the tracks was what killed the trolleys where I grew up. Nowadays, one trolley car can cost up to 10 times what a bus costs and does not last 10 times as long. Nonetheless, some European cities still have extensive streetcar systems.
I’ve been a hardcore railfan for more than twenty years, and cannot recall reading a credible story anywhere that General Motors had a policy against shipping freight via electrified rail lines. Firstly, the early diesel locomotives of GM were designed specifically to replace steam locomotion, which was dominant by far in this country at the time. Why would GM not have a policy against shipping freight on steam-hauled lines, which were the target market for their diesels?
Few railroads of the period would have needed to be strong-armed into favoring diesel over electric power; the relatively low traffic density of most freight lines outside the northeast, and the high cost of infrastructure (substations, overhead wiring, motive power) made electrification a non-starter in most areas.
There just never have been that many electrifed freight lines in the USA. The most extensive network was primarily in the Northeast: the Pennsylvania Railroad east of Harrisburg, and the New Haven between New York and Boston.
Elsewhere, the most elaborate electrified heavy freight line was the Milwaukee Road’s route through the northern Rockies (now abandoned); although this was more in the nature of a long electrified helper district (to assist heavy frights over mountain grades) than a true electrified freight line.
Finally, despite the limited market for straight electric motive power in this country, GM’s Electro-Motive division several time tried to enter this market, most recently with a pair of prototypes built in the mid-70s. Railroad interest was insufficient to justify production.
Re: the other question that came up in this thread, what killed the trolley and interurban lines of the '20s and '30s was the fact that most were constructed as private ventures and when people began deserting them in favor of the private automobile, they no longer made money. Buses were less expensive to run, so for the transit companies the choice was stark: switch to buses or cease to exist. It has only been with the shifting of public transit to publicly-funded operating agencies that trolleys (“light rail”) has come back into vogue.
Oh, as for the first diesels, the first commercially successful diesel locomotives constructed in the US are generally considered to be a series of boxcab switchers built by ALCO-GE-Ingersoll Rand from about 1917 onward. These were low-powered, low-speed units marketed as a cleaner and quieter alternative to steam switchers in urban areas.
Electo-Motive began as an independent builder of gasoline-electric passenger railcars, branching into diesel passenger and freight power (with Winton engines) in the mid-1930s. Their Pioneer Zephyr, a streamlined, articulated 3-unit diesel passenger train, is generally credited as the first fully successful application of diesel power for over-the-road use. GM took over the company sometime around 1940, when it became apparent that railroads were likely to start wholely replacing steam power with diesel.
I’ve read a 1949 book called “On Time” (perhaps it can be found in some libraries) that is a fascinating chronicle (really!) of the early days at Electro-Motive.