(The following story by Gary Brown was published in the January 20 issue of the Canton Repository.)
BREWSTER, Ohio — Many could sing that they had been working on the railroad 50 years ago. In fact, 250 employees at the Brewster yards of the Nickel Plate Road labored daily on locomotives and the freight and passenger cars they pulled along tracks near and far.
“The towering diesel and steam engines take a terrific beating from the top of their steel nostrils to the multiple mesh of their wheels,” an article in The Repository explained late in 1952.
“ ‘Doctoring dinosaurs might be easier,’ ” one repairman noted.
The death knell of steam trains was being sounded early in the 1950s, and the health of railroads in general was placed in doubt by the increase in goods and people being moved about the country by other means of transportation. There was little the people in the Brewster yards could do about railroading’s future 50 years ago, but they certainly could fix what physically ailed trains at that time.
“Every year these heavy-duty engines must be stripped down until they are just a shadow of their former selves,” The Repository explained. “They are gone over inch by inch. Mighty machines press, squeeze, and pound parts back into shape.”
The “doctor” bill was high. Repair costs ran up to $20,000, sometimes more. And that didn’t include daily inspections and regular monthly checkups, Brewster officials told the newspaper.
The wear and tear was most prevalent and most obvious on locomotive wheels. The steel “tires” of locomotives, more than three inches thick, had a lifespan of only two or three years. The wheels needed to be turned — recontoured — after only a single year of use.
Brewster was the hub for distributing coal and iron ore in Ohio. It also was the center of railroad repair for the region. The Brewster yards handled an average of 50 locomotives a day, incoming and outgoing. Statistics offered 50 years ago noted that a steam locomotive weighed 250 tons and could choke down 22,000 gallons of water and a score or more tons of coal.
Engines cost $1,000 a ton to construct, Brewster officials said.
“Diesels gradually are replacing the steam engine, but Brewster will be one of the last terminal points in the Nickel Plate system to be converted to diesels altogether,” The Repository story said in 1952, noting that there were 20 steam locomotives ready for the scrap pile. What couldn’t be doctored, it seemed, was taken off life support.
“The diesel engine with its individual motors in each pair of wheels is more efficient,” the newspaper explained. “Soon it will rule the roost.”