Sunday, October 29, 2017

General Electric wants out of the locomotive business

Wow.  The diesel locomotive business really got started right after WWII.  All the railroads wanted to replace their steam engines.  This was a huge piece of business.  Between 1945 and 1957 every steam engine in the land was scrapped and replaced with brand new diesels.  The Electro motive division of General Motors got the bulk of this work.  Old line steam engine makers Baldwin and Alco offered  product, and Fairbanks Morse and GE offered product but EMD got all the business.  90% or better of all railroad locomotives were EMD built by 1960.  All the competitors dropped out except GE, who still offered fairly decent product, but wasn't selling much against EMD. 
   Somehow, in the 1980's GE pulled ahead of entrenched EMD and today is the best seller, with EMD just clinging to life.  GE did some $4.7 billion worth of diesel locomotive business last year.  A handsome chunk of change, even compared to GE's other businesses (jet engines, heavy electrical equipment) which brought in close to $100 billion. 
   For some reason the new guy at GE, the one who sold off the GE corporate jet fleet,  wants to get rid of the locomotive business.  No reason given.   That's some 10000 employees.  The Wall St Journal had a picture of the locomotive production line,  giant room,  half a dozen big locomotives under construction. 
   Some business writer ought to do a book on how GE managed to take to diesel market away from EMD back in the 1980's.  There ought to be some good stuff in there.  Was it GE's AC powered locomotives that had greater tractive effort (pulled harder) and cost more?   Was it sloppiness over at EMD?  something else? 
  I wonder why GE now wants out of the locomotive business.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, 1980 was about the time that GM started thinking about spinning off EMD; so railroads went to GE. Now that EMD has found a new home, they are regaining their customer base, and GE's feeling the pinch.

Dstarr said...

I've lost touch with the real railroad business. Is Trains magazine still worth while? I'd have to subscribe, Walmart and other local stores up here don't carry it.