WI: Ford "Railway" Company?

In 1879, Ford left home to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit, first with James F. Flower & Bros., and later with the Detroit Dry Dock Co. In 1882, he returned to Dearborn to work on the family farm, where he became adept at operating the Westinghouse portable steam engine. He was later hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines.

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With a POD occurring during his employment at Westinghouse, what if Henry Ford fell in love with the steam engines he was assigned to work on and subsequently applied his inventive and industrial genius to railway industry (rather than motor car) for the rest of his life?

How would both the lack of him in the motor car industry, and his presence in the railway/rail car industry effect the transportation innovations of the early 20th century?

Might we see a massive "Second Renaissance" of the train in America? The world?
 
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With a POD occurring during his employment at Westinghouse, what if Henry Ford fell in love with the steam engines he was assigned to work on and subsequently applied his inventive and industrial genius to railway industry (rather than motor car) for the rest of his life?

How would both the lack of him in the motor car industry, and his presence in the railway/rail car industry effect the transportation innovations of the early 20th century?

Might we see a massive "Second Renaissance" of the train in America? The world?

I doubt it'll have implications reaching all that far. The 3 major loco builders were already fairly well established - though admittedly Lima was fairly new.

It's not particularly easy to apply assembly-line production to steam locos - every major railroad had their own ideas for what worked best on their own iron, and every new class of motive power was built differently. Plus locomotive building is such an intensive process that it's not easy to make a veritable assembly line out of it - the boilers were basically built in the erecting halls and kept there as they were too big to haul around the plants.

What you MIGHT see is an earlier development of the gas motorcar or "Doodlebug" as pioneered by Winton much later on. This COULD in theory save some of the branch lines as these cars were far cheaper to operate than steam locomotives - this might've helped roads such as the CMSt.P&P which had a very profitable long-haul business but absolutely hemmorhaged cash from its big network of short Midwestern lines.
 
What you MIGHT see is an earlier development of the gas motorcar or "Doodlebug" as pioneered by Winton much later on. This COULD in theory save some of the branch lines as these cars were far cheaper to operate than steam locomotives - this might've helped roads such as the CMSt.P&P which had a very profitable long-haul business but absolutely hemmorhaged cash from its big network of short Midwestern lines.

Or an earlier Budd RDC type cars?
 

Delta Force

Banned
Locomotives are essentially small power plants on rails. Just like with power plants, there could be the potential for significantly lower costs if locomotives were standardized and mass produced. At the very least standardized propulsion equipment could help with operations and maintenance.
 
Locomotives are essentially small power plants on rails. Just like with power plants, there could be the potential for significantly lower costs if locomotives were standardized and mass produced. At the very least standardized propulsion equipment could help with operations and maintenance.

Diesels, yeah. But steam's a bit different. The closest we ever got to standardization in the states were the USRA Standards, but even then each road that had them built for home use made its own modifications - tenders, feedwater heaters, valve gear and cab outfitting, etc. Mass Production in steam was also never exactly a thing - as a traffic demand came up or power became outdated, roads would order relatively small numbers of locos to fill the demand. Many other components howver - appliances such as lighting, feedwater heat and even wheelsets - was indeed standardized.
 
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