From Steam to Diesel: Managerial Customs and Organizational Capabilities in the Twentieth-Century American Locomotive Industry (review)

The voluminous historical literature on railroads has focused on the heroic era of the nineteenth century more than on the trials and tribulations of the twentieth century. Albert Churella has helped remedy this situation with his well-written work on steam locomotive manufacturers and their reaction to dieselization. This is much more than simply a book about railroads. As the title suggests, Churella looks at the corporate culture and technological capabilities of the longtime steam locomotive builders Baldwin, Alco (American Locomotive Company), and Lima, and contrasts their responses to the diesel with that of the new Electro-Motive Corporation of General Motors. In doing so he sheds light not only on the process of technological change in the locomotive industry but on that process as it occurs in large organizations in the capital goods industry generally. Contained within the shift from steam to diesel production is also the broader issue of the “shift from customized, small batch production techniques to the philosophy and methodology of mass production” (p. 10). In this regard the book is a fitting complement to John K. Brown’s The Baldwin Locomotive Works (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

Churella starts with a short review of the capabilities and weaknesses of steam and diesel motive power. He then looks at the precursors to diesel locomotives, self-propelled railcars. These railcars have been almost entirely ignored, even in the railfan literature. Churella begins to address this oversight with his work and correctly recognizes the role that these “doodlebugs” played in priming the pump for dieselization. Electro-Motive achieved its first success with gasoline-electric railcars, and they led directly to Depression-era diesel streamliners such as the Zephyr.

The next two chapters compare the successes of Electro-Motive, first affiliated with and later a division of General Motors, with the failures and missed opportunities at Alco and Baldwin. Electro-Motive enjoyed not only the deep pockets of parent General Motors but also the marketing and financing resources of that industrial behemoth, something that Alco and Baldwin could not duplicate, no matter how well they produced their locomotives. The final chapters analyze World War II, postwar dieselization, and the “era of oligopoly” dominated by General Electric and General Motors in the 1960s and beyond. Churella refutes the widely held view that the War Production Board hampered diesel locomotive development at Alco and Baldwin with wartime production controls. Internal management at Alco and Baldwin, along with their outmoded systems of production, did much more harm than the War Production Board ever did. Churella’s sources are wide and varied and include oral history interviews and trade publications in addition to manuscript collections. Churella does draw somewhat from the rich railfan literature but could have mined it better, as a few notable works are missing. Judicious use of tables, charts, and photographs would also have enhanced the book.

This is an important work in business history and the history of technology and will likely have a large impact by drawing attention to a seldom studied area of technological history. At times, however, it reads as though it were a sales brochure for Electro-Motive and General Motors. In Churella’s analysis they seemingly do no wrong, while in reality they did drop the ball a few times, most notably with the failure of the BL-2 line of locomotives. While praising Electro-Motive, Churella is perhaps too hard on Alco, although Lima and Baldwin were almost unredeemable. Alco did achieve some success, especially with the RS-1,2,3 line of locomotives. While Alco did not have the managerial skill of Electro-Motive, what finally killed Alco was not managerial incompetence as much as the fact that their main supplier, General Electric, became their competitor.

Despite these caveats, the book is a good read and would be appropriate for...