EMD History

In 1933 General Motors pioneered the two-cycle, light-weight diesel engine for locomotives. In that year the railroads had 51,000 steam engines in operation. By 1954 there were fewer than 5,000 steam engines in service. The other 46,000 had been replaced by 23,000 diesels.

This dramatic reduction in total number of units required has occurred despite the fact that gross ton-miles transported by the railroads has almost doubled over this span of years, with each freight diesel locomotive unit performing 3.4 times the work of one steam locomotive. Today [1955], diesel locomotives account for 86 percent of all passenger traffic and 84 percent of all freight traffic. They account for 90 percent of all switcher hours.

Based on Interstate Commerce Commission records, diesel locomotives are saving at least $600 million a year in fuel and maintenance costs alone. Railroad officials freely admit that the present healthy financial status of their industry can be attributed largely to the diesel locomotive.

When we created the diesel electric locomotive, there was not a single part of that locomotive but what the functioning and the engineering had been known to the mechanical arts for 50 years. The diesel engine was 50 or 75 years old. It took an organization with courage, with capital, and the know-how, to put the known parts together and make the diesel electric locomotive.

The steam locomotive people could have done it just as well. They didn't have the imagination, they didn't have the courage, they didn't have the capital.

I maintain it was a great accomplishment. I think we contributed a great deal in more employment, in improving the economic position of the railroads. It isn't very often in a short number of years, of say, 20 years about, that we eliminate the steam locomotive that hauled freight and passengers from the time that the railroad was developed. That was what was accomplished. The other steam locomotive people could have done it just as well. They didn't have the imagination, they didn't have the courage, they didn't have the capital.

Even when we came out you would be surprised to see the advertisements that the steam-locomotive people printed in the papers decrying the diesel locomotive and saying it would never get anywhere and yet it eliminated them in the short period of 20 years.

Answering the question "Was it General Motors' financial capacity which was the principal factor enabling it to develop the diesel locomotive?"

No, I think it was quite incidental. I think the other locomotive people, the steam-locomotive people, could have done it if they had had the imagination. Sure we built a plant but the plant was not large. The amount of capital was not great when we started.

I don't think the size of General Motors has anything to do with its efficiency. I think the efficiency depends upon the administrative technique, and the people who comprise General Motors. In the early days, when all automobile companies were young, they all had the same opportunities to grow but the others didn't.