High Hoods. Why?

[quote="O-6-O"]Well I don't run trains but it seems to me if I were and I looked out and
saw an impending collision with a log truck or worse a gasoline tanker,
Id sure rather have that long hood out front. Steam hoggers did it for
years.

STEAM ON
/--OOO-;-oo--oo-[/quote]

You hit it dead on. As a youngster during the transition period to diesels, I asked an N&W engineer neighbor why the new diesels were run long hood forward instead of short hood like all the diesels in photographs I'd seen.

His reply was that they ran long hood forward just like the steamers so the engineers would have no complaints about running either type. This fellow was a long time steam engineer who ran all classes of N&W's big steam; A's, J's, Y's, Z1bs, K1's and K2a's out of Radford, VA, so I tend to believe his explanation.

That was the same explaination I've heard from old timers. They liked the long hood forward as it was similar to the boiler of the old steam engines. The N&W avoided the first generation of diesels and never owned F units.

The briliant powers that be in motive power also insisted on the 'spartan cabs' with the old control stands and no A/C even after the wide cab became standard and they had to pay extra for the old cabs.

Ex-N&W may have had dual controls, but most ex-SOU did not - they were single control stand, long hood forward operation. There were exceptions, of course, probably due to various acquisitions of other roads' power. In fact, GP-18s from the original Norfolk Southern had their short hoods raised after SOU bought the railroad. And I will tell you - there's nothing like bombing down the road in a long hood forward SD45 at 50 per...