1955: Dieselization, the process of replacing steam-fired locomotives with diesel-electric ones, on the Norfolk and Western Railway began with the purchase of eight American Locomotive Company (commonly referrred to as 'Alco') RS-3 road switcher locomotives, which were numbered from 300 to 307.
The RS-3 was a commonly used road-switcher locomotive, capable of pulling freight over main lines (i.e. 'road') and also of performing switching tasks (i.e. 'switcher') in a yard.
N&W press releases at the time indicated that the locomotives were purchased for service on the low-traffic Durham District, in order to release steam locomotives for service elsewhere. Racehorse Smith stated that, "[The purchase of RS-3s] does not mean that we have changed our view that our modern roller-bearing coal-burning steam locomotives can handle the major part of our traffic economically."
That would of course be a statement which Nixon Administration Press Secretary Ron Ziegler would describe as being "inoperative", had he been around at the time. However, those eight RS-3s would be the only ones of their type directly purchased by the N&W; the next Alco locomotives to appear on the property would be RS-11s, Alco's answer to the Electro-Motive Division's GP7 and GP9 series of locomotives.
Information for this post came from William E. Warden's Norfolk & Western: Diesel's Last Conquest, published by TLC Publishing of Lynchburg, Virginia in 1991.
Posted by Country Pundit at May 29, 2004 02:28 AM