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catenary-chad · 4 months ago

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Why Greaseball is a Really Great train villain: a looong post (4.8k words) on all the historical train context behind replica Greaseball

tl;dr he’s British anti-diesel sentiment applied to American views of diesel trains and it’s glorious because he represents so many longstanding issues with freight railroads and diesel hegemony there. UP is a genuinely horrible company that makes an awesome cartoon bully.

For all my issues with the other main engines, I think (replica) Greaseball is FANTASTIC. He just works on so many fundamental levels and gets so much better/worse with historical context. If we make him an EMD E9 locomotive (a common headcanon) things get even more interesting, and there’s even a convenient irl engine to base him on!

Note: if you’re into real US trains this info probably won’t be as new to you as my Nez Cassé post, since E and F units are so well preserved and documented in English. A lot of the topics I go on are pretty widely discussed in US railfan circles and not terribly obscure. Also this is just about replica, Elvis-style Greaseball vs Wembleyball… her being more modern and European changes a lot and I would take a very different approach.

Also CW for non-graphic discussion of abuse in the very last section. I have a separate warning before it comes up so you can leave before then.

DIESEL TRACTION IN THE US

First of all, to clear up a common misconception: 99% of all diesel locomotives are diesel-electric. The diesel engine is used to generate electricity to power electric motors to turn the wheels. This is why dual-mode engines that can switch between drawing third rail/overhead wire electricity and making their own with a diesel engine are so common. Besides the power source, they work similarly, so it’s not hard to incorporate. This is NOT how hybrid cars work, though diesel-electric setups have been used on very heavy trucks for purposes like mining. Diesel-mechanical is more in line with how automobiles work but is basically unheard of outside of very small switchers in the US (mostly in museums now) and 50s-era shunters and that one weird Fell diesel in the UK. The technical reasons of why isn’t really important here, but has to do with the difficult of making an appropriate gearbox for road locomotives and appealing qualities of electric motors for train use (high starting torque).

Internal combustion-based locomotives are actually much more recent than pure electric ones. Electric engines achieved practical use around the 1890s and were well-established in urban and mountainous areas by the 20s-30s…. which is when diesel boxcab switchers first started production in substantial numbers and lightweight diesel trainsets like the Zephyrs, M10000, and Flying Hamburger started to pop up. The earliest diesels were either slow (switchers) or fast but very weak (lightweight trainsets and railbusses). There were major tech limits to maximum horsepower in diesel locomotives until the second half of the 20th century, which is why several of them were often needed to replace one steam or electric engine, and why you had some weird turbine designs in the 50s-70s as an alternative.

Early diesel locomotives in the US actually had a lot in common with their early implementation in the UK. They’re often perceived differently because Thomas the Tank Engine had so many characters based on unsuccessful early British diesel models, while most of the failed earlier US diesels are obscure compared to the successful and widespread ones (that often have the strongest museum presence). There were some notably good early switcher models (some still being used today) that were among the first to replace steam engines because it was one of the tasks that they had the biggest advantage over them in, and limited size wasn’t an issue. Road diesel implementation was messy and due to the early state of the technology, some railroads like the Pennsylvania Railroad had a strategy more akin to early British Rail in that they planned to just slowly phase out steam as they electrified. Higher wages and stronger unions were also a factor in both countries dieselizing, due to the vastly lower labor needed for diesel locomotives vs steam and generally safer, more pleasant working conditions on them. There was also a need to shed a reputation for being outdated to draw in customers again with both. There was also a desperate early demand for diesel power that led to a lot of questionable builders and designs being picked up early on and later dumped for being nonstandard.

The main difference is that dieselization’s serious pursuit in the US started around the Great Depression and really picked up in the late 30s, almost two decades before the Modernization Plan of 1955. So it was a far more mature and well-established technology by the 50s and Greaseball is very much based on this dominant position vs the messy early experiments of the Thomas diesels.

Greaseball’s helmet heavily resembles the fronts of the E and F unit carbody locomotives made by EMD from the 30s-50s. I’ll go into those specific models later, but the manufacturer alone is really interesting and has a lot of great symbolism that works with Greaseball.

Earlier diesel manufacturers included steam builders like Alco and Baldwin, outside companies getting into the diesel locomotive market like Fairbanks-Morse, and EMD, which started as an independent company but quickly became part of General Motors. One of the major advantages EMD would acquire is mass-production in assembly lines, the way cars were made, as opposed to building one engine at a time like steam shops did. So Greaseball has some quiet ties to the auto industry (and boy did GM hurt trains in other avenues). They also used common parts between models, making them relatively easy to repair and rebuild. You had all kind of mods and changes done to their engines over the decades, which is a fun tie-in to the bodybuilder AND greaser aspect of Greaseball. I’ll go into how I think he’d specifically be modified/rebuilt later though.

Another major factor of EMD is… they often weren’t the best in a lot of ways and very much an example of “survival of the good enough”. Until very recently they all used relatively dirty and inefficient two-stroke engines and other manufacturers often had stronger or technically superior competing models… but it was the ease of working on them and relative reliability vs their competitors that contributed to their success and helped make EMD the dominant manufacturer.

Bonus fun fact: EMD (and later General Electric) had a lot of success in the export model market due to their early reliability, especially vs British diesel engines. One of the funnier instances being several colonial African railways holding onto steam into the 70s because they were forced to buy crappy British diesel engines otherwise, and promptly dieselizing as soon as they could buy American ones. EMD made huge inroads into the British freight market with the Class 59 and 66 (the latter also used in continental Europe). These came too late to have had any affect on the development of the show early on, but it’s an interesting instance of American encroachment that could be thematically relevant. The sheer ubiquity of EMD diesels worldwide makes Greaseball weirdly relevant in a lot of countries if you basis swap him a little. I haven’t figured out quite how I’d approach Girlball but I’d definitely make her one of these export models since it fits.

Anyways, back to the general history timeline because it’s important for the other reason EMD was so successful. By the late 30s, diesel switchers were widespread and road models were starting to come out in limited numbers. Widespread dieselization would have happened nearly a decade earlier if not for World War II. When the US entered the war, copper, oil, and diesel engines became critical to the war effort. Coal was not and steam engines don’t use much copper, so the existing steam manufacturers were forced into building them. EMD’s FT series had proven itself prewar and the company was among the few to be able to develop their locomotive lines during the war. This gave the company a huge advantage post-war and their E and F units dominated the road locomotive market afterwards (switchers remained more competitive since they had more development before and during the war).

If you’re European and know little about American trains, you may wonder when things started getting electrified after that. They didn’t. Outside of one stretch of the Northeast Corridor, a recent project by Caltrain, and some isolated freight lines… the US didn’t electrify anything after WWII, and if anything de-electrified much that had existed. The oil crises of the 70s almost led to something, but the subsequent drop in prices in the 80s made that dry up too. Leading to the modern day status of having only 1% electrified rail mileage. The rest is all diesel domain. They were never a stopgap here. Due to railroads remaining private businesses post-WWII and facing almost unwinnable economic and political conditions vs roads and air travel, the cost of electrification was out of the question and the much smaller up front cost of diesel engines made them take permanent hold over most of the country post-steam. To this day, railroads avoid paying up front for things vs just paying more in yearly maintenance for diesel locomotives, and the price of fuel has never gotten high enough to incentivize electrification. There’s also a whole carrot vs stick situation with state governments raising emissions standards without providing assistance to electrify that leads to a crappy state of limbo that just gives automobiles even more of an unfair advantage, but that’s another tangent that’s not relevant enough to go into.

This is all a long way to say that Greaseball as the conservative, oppressive establishment is spot-on to the status of diesel traction in the US. It really can’t be overstated how dominant and inescapable it is. It’s kind of hilarious hearing people from the UK or Europe talk about how gross and stinky and backwards they are and how much more disliked they are there. This is why the Greaseball vs Electra feud is so appealing to me- the US is one of the few places where they would be considered remotely competitive and where that matchup is politically relevant. There’s this compelling thread of Greaseball being a “pragmatic compromise” that’s held on so long it’s become status quo, but would be viewed as a regressive relic elsewhere in the world, akin to how the US’s economic politics are seen in much of the rest of the world. Greaseball is the majority who very much has capitalism and inertia on his side, Electra is the more qualified but long-sidelined minority who wishes things were even a little more like Europe economically and politically. They’re so rural vs urban, right vs left wing coded it hurts. Diesel power mainly thrives where frequencies are low and distances are long and rail is a private business that often can’t afford to electrify. Urban trains are almost exclusively electric due to their inherent frequency and pollution requirements, and are almost synonymous with being state-owned.

Him being particularly nasty to steam engines also checks out, he’s the era of diesel locomotive that often directly replaced them and I’ve seen claims EMD did deceptive things if not outright cheated on tests vs steam engines. At the very least they had fairly aggressive marketing. There’s a reason why I object to the idea that Electra would cheat against a steam engine (even in the early days electric ones trounced them so thoroughly it routinely exceeded railroads’ expectations), but think Greaseball doing it makes sense. Him playing dirty against Electra also makes sense because they’d have similar top speeds (and that’s being very conservative with Electra’s abilities and keeping them a relatively old model) but Electra benefits far more from a clean setting and would be relatively vulnerable to attack. There’s been decades of cultural downplaying of the advantages of electric vs diesel trains due to the latter’s sheer dominance in the US too. Further tying into the political aspect, electric trains are one of those things whose status only goes up the more you actually learn about them… and it really knocks combustion engines down several pegs, paralleling how right wing politicians in the US tend to be actively anti-education because they quietly rely on voters being low-information and uneducated about how negative the effects of their policies often are.

Greaseball as a macho jock is also reflective of the perceived strength of diesel vs electric engines. Because the US is infamous for its large heavy freight trains that are almost entirely diesel-hauled (besides a single power plant out west), electric freight is an almost alien concept and people associate electric traction with high speed trains, subways, maybe lighter, faster European freight trains at most. People often act like they’re weak because of this. This is patently untrue, just look at IORE or the Virginian Railway. Also see my earlier discussion of how weak diesel engines were early on. Electric locomotives still have vastly higher horsepower per single unit and the only reason there aren’t ones as strong as diesel engines in the US is lack of demand. It wouldn’t be that hard to build one for that niche. But diesel has strong associations with being the “strong and manly” blue-collar option because of its use by every large freight railroad and almost every shortline for all the tough, gritty jobs, unlike those darn city slicker commuter trains. Let’s just conveniently forget that the Milwaukee Road existed and that mines are full of weird little battery-powered “lokies”. People will even crow about the Big Boy all day and rarely acknowledge the multiple electric engine models of that era with comparable abilities.

EMD E and F UNITS

Finally, we can discuss Greaseball’s more specific basis. Greaseball’s helmet doesn’t have a single explicit one like Electra’s, but its styling is very typical of 30s-50s era carbody diesel locomotives, specifically the “bulldog nose” E and F-Units. These models were and still remain some of the most popular toy and model diesel engines, and are some of the most recognizable American trains in general. Which they totally deserve, they came in a lot of fun colors and were VERY widely used from the 30s to early 80s irl and were still used in limited numbers for decades after that and are extremely common in museums today. It’s probably harder to find a railroad museum in the US that doesn’t have one. They are probably THE symbol of diesel trains in the US, especially circa the 50s. Even highway signs for train stations resemble them.

Carbody locomotives like these made the streamlined body a structural element of the engine to save weight and required indoor walkways for maintenance access vs being able to open external panels. Alco and Baldwin also made far less successful carbody locomotives as competitors but they looked very different. Funny enough, a number of electric locomotives of the era also were built this way, but with cabs at both ends, some of them looking a LOT like Greaseball’s helmet.

The E-units were EMD’s first line of road diesel locomotives, mainly designed for passenger service. Since the 30s there were several different models of the line, the first few being built in smaller numbers, and the later ones being much more widely produced post-WWII. They were relatively long and large for a diesel engine of the time, with atypical A1A -A1A (powered/unpowered/powered x2) wheel arrangements and two seperate prime movers (the actual diesel engine) to produce more horsepower due to the limited abilities of individual engines. While successful compared to their competitors (which were… generally a mess) there’s a sense that they were designed for a time that would never come.

They were very much optimized for being smooth at speed for passenger use and while not useless for freight service, weren’t ideal for it due to their limited strength and not having all powered wheels for traction. Which was a terrible market to be in with the massive decline in passenger rail post-WWII. The E-units still generally had long and successful lives, but were never as successful as their younger, smaller sibling, the F-unit.

F-units visually resemble shorter E-units, but with single prime movers and Bo-Bo wheel arrangements (four powered axles). By modern standards they’re small and not terribly powerful, but for their time they were solid and VERY successful in freight service, and often took the place of E-units in passenger service since they worked for that too, and were more versatile overall. There are a bunch of F-units running in museums because they look good and are easy to find parts for due to the sheer quantity produced (also some, but far fewer E-units). You could totally make Greaseball an F-unit and it would fit with how there’s been some infamously short Greaseball actors.

There’s a lot of fun commonalities between both models that are relevant to Greaseball. Both were explicitly designed to be used in multi-engine sets due to their limited individual strength, which perfectly fits Greaseball having his Gang follow him around. Working in packs that large is a VERY midcentury diesel thing. Both had the massive drawback of having no rear visibility and basically no ability to go backwards for switching. That was one of the main traits that led to this style of engine falling out of favor, roadswitchers that actually had rear visibility were more versatile than having separate road and switch engines. In a race going backwards, Rusty would clean his clock even if he was SUPER crappy and could only go walking pace, because Greaseball would be flying totally blind and crash. It’s also a hassle to perform maintenance and get inside that body style and the noses were reportedly harder to manufacture.

As a cursed side note, ATSF solved these problems with their old F-units by roadswitcherfying them into CF-7s. Hey, they were old and past their prime but still useful and worked GREAT as ugly utilitarian roadswitchers and ran for decades afterwards. There’s several of these things running in museums. I’ve actually worked on one and I approve of roadswitcherfication because they really are way less of a pain to maintain this way.

Speaking of rebuilds, the highest horsepower Greaseball would have as an E-unit would as-built is only 2,400 if he was an E9, but because early EMDs got modified so much and routinely re-engined, we can play around with this. It fits the character and the Railways Series routinely did this kind of thing. We’ll suppose Greaseball was re-engined or otherwise modified to get up to 2,700 horsepower… but then there’s the reported issue that the unpowered axles might make him too slippery to actually apply full force, so we’ll get a bit more out there and say he got more substantially rebuilt into a Co-Co (six powered axle) arrangement. Now you have something that would be vaguely comparable with one of Amtrak’s dysfunctional SDP40F diesels of the late 70s-early 80s, if still a bit weaker but probably more physically stable. It’s hard to avoid that Greaseball is kind of statistically wimpy no matter how you slice it. They’d need to tweak the numbers in the song a little, but again, swapping out engines in early EMDs was super common and suits him so it’s not too much of a stretch to bump him to 3700 or something. You still have issue that he’s not large by UP standards specifically (they are INFAMOUS for large single-unit engines) but he’d still be fairly large vs more typical passenger diesels of the time.

Anyways, another VERY fun fact about E and F units is that they were regularly used on corporate trains after most of them were withdrawn from regular mainline service in the 70s-80s. People often complain that Greaseball is barely relevant circa the 80s, which isn’t really true since a lot of E and F units were used on commuter lines for years afterward (if often in cab car form, which are terrifying in any talking train verse). But there’s another huge loophole that gives a perfect excuse for his existence well into the modern day. Union Pacific itself used a set of three E9s on their corporate specials until 2019! They only got pulled due to wheel issues… got no lovers if you got no wheels I guess. But now you have a perfect excuse for why Greaseball is a 50s-era engine with UP colors pulling passenger trains well after the railroad axed those services in the early 70s. He’s a corporate pawn! He’s one of the faces of their company, chauffeuring executives around. Which leads into another fascinating topic with him.

UNION PACIFIC, FREIGHT RAILROADS, AND PASSENGER RAIL

All of the modern big Class I railroads in the US suck in similar ways, but Union Pacific has a stronger identity and seems to have the largest cultural presence abroad, making it the most visible and appealing of them to the public. It tends to be THE American railroad to many, which goes well with Greaseball’s basis being THE American diesel engine. Yes, they do have some cool heritage fleet stuff and really cool heritage unit paint jobs, but you’ll never see me depict them in a terribly positive way (if at all) because they’re a PR campaign like the Budweiser Clydesdales for an infamously awful company. Make no mistake, this is a company that’s been voted “worst place to work” on multiple occasions (and its cohorts aren’t much better). That’s the ironic thing about Electra being made a crappy boss, Amtrak is notably much better to its workers (and steam engines are the most competitive where labor is cheapest and least organized). The main thing is unreasonable on-call hours, lack of sick leave, vacation, and break days in general, and working conditions. Look into the blocked 2022 railroad strike for more on this. Greaseball could be SO nasty to the freight to reflect this if you made him a symbol of railroad leadership. You’d have any railroaders in the audience booing him if they did this in the US, it’s a very relevant political issue. Ironically, things weren’t nearly as bad labor-wise in the 80s, ALW just really bet on the right horse in terms of railroads to align a train villain with. But there’s a more prominant and existing aspect of canon that also fits the crappy things UP and other class Is do.

Passenger rail has never been as profitable as freight in the US. To give a modern ballpark estimate, I’ve heard $30,000 revenue on a fully loaded longer passenger train vs $500,000 revenue on a train of oil tankers. And that’s not even including the higher maintenance standards that passenger rail requires, which adds millions to its cost and makes it almost impossible for it to turn a profit. There is a reason why almost all countries with widespread passenger rail today have nationalized rail systems and even US passenger service is all government-run outside Brightline and museums.

This situation was particularly bad in the 50s-60s before Amtrak took over passenger service. Passenger trains absolutely bled money overall, and many of them were required to keep running even at massive losses per government regulation because they were an essential service. This contributed to the financial ruin of many railroads, and most of them dropped passenger service or sold it to the government as soon as it was offered. UP in particular was more financially stable, but also happily got rid of their passenger trains when offered.

Since then, the giant merged Class I railroads have become almost exclusively freight-oriented and hostile towards Amtrak-run passenger services. They’re almost all terrible, but UP is one of the more visible offenders, holding up commuter services in Chicago, and contributing to the massive delays in long-distance western trains. “Coach sexism” in the form of widespread hostility towards passenger rail by the likes of UP is one of the few canon social metaphors that WORKS. The other engines would not be that way considering the systems they’re aligned with, but Greaseball could be made so, so much worse.

There is a weird element of “I hate my wife” boomer humor when people describe passenger trains. There’s “keeping freight trains in line” schedule-wise due to their time sensitivity. There’s being seen as needlessly spendy for PR reasons (often true in the older days) paralleling “my wife wastes money on stupid things”. There’s being seen as more delicate and refined due to needing better track conditions and gentler handling because you know, humans have standards that grain hoppers and sand don’t. There’s the way that passenger rail isn’t as profitable as freight and basically requires government subsidies… not unakin to caring jobs and “women’s work” in general vs blue collar industrial jobs (Caveat: passenger rail employees were almost all male until Amtrak). In short, yeah the freight railroads’ treatment of passenger trains in the US does have parallels to sexism, if slightly different from how canon does it. Abruptly dumping them in the 70s also fits Greaseball ditching Dinah mid-show.

Even if you go the comparatively mild route of mirroring modern railroads, you still have him treating the coaches as second class vs freight (despite them being legally prioritized). This is a major issue and why Amtrak has so many delays on long distance trains. To summarize a complicated issue: due to the relatively unique economics of railroads, they are incentivized to run fewer, longer, irregular freight trains that have become so large they don’t fit in sidings and can’t physically let prioritized passenger trains through. They then get delayed for hours, especially if the freight train breaks down (bonus: freight trains have a staff of two, engineer and conductor. The conductor may have to walk up to THREE MILES to check out a possible defect on a car, delaying even more). The Class Is have a broadly hostile relationship with Amtrak in general for various reasons related to insurance and minimal investment in track maintenance, and it even affects non-Amtrak passenger services like steam excursions. UP has its personal steam fleet for publicity reasons, but all of the Class Is are various shades of hostile to running steam excursions with passengers now due to those same reasons. Even UP barely sells public tickets for theirs.

Bonus: the reason Mexico has basically no passenger rail now is due to the nationalized railroads being taken over by companies heavily aligned with US freight railroads and with many similar attitudes towards passenger service. They ditched virtually all of it en masse when they took over. Turbo works perfectly as just Greaseball but in Mexico because the same thing happened there… only a few years before the Mexican Stex production happened. Electra might be an even more pathetic and unthreatening character there though, because the single, long-delayed electrified mainline built by NdeM was ripped out after only a few years of service by the private freight railroads.

WARNING: Leave now if you do not want to read about how abusive Greaseball could be made based to US railroads’ treatment of passenger trains pre-70s. It’s not graphic, but it is blunt and dark. I put this at the end for a reason, there is nothing beyond this last section.

Basically, canon even at its worst arguably undersells how awful Greaseball could be to Dinah and the coaches if you make them symbols of UP and other major railroads vs passenger service pre-Amtrak. They could be even MORE toxic. You have a situation now where he outright hates her and wants her gone for above reasons, but is forced to stay in the relationship due to outside requirements and is fundamentally built for that kind of setup as an E-unit. Railroads forced to keep passenger services usually didn’t have mandated quality standards for them. They just had to have something. This led to pathetically short trains (one or two cars), understaffing, and poor maintenance because they just had to have SOME passenger train on that line. Track conditions reached terrible standards in the 70s on railroads that were near bankruptcy and delaying maintenance. I absolute do not blame canon for not going this dark in a kids show, but basically there is no limit to how miserable Greaseball could make her life, short of actually killing her. I can’t understate how much she symbolizes something he’d want to rid himself of at any cost but can’t and will take that out on. It’s BLEAK. I don’t think I’d even write them this dark myself.

Well… now you see why I do not redeem and revise Greaseball the way I do Electra. While the latter is wrongly demonized in an impressive number of ways, Greaseball is awful for all the right ones, to extents deeper than the creators probably ever imagined. He is so versatile and nearly timeless in his awfulness. If Greaseball were portrayed as remotely good I’d be ripping him to greater shreds than I do Rusty, but he’s great as a hateable bad guy who’s entertaining and globally recognizable even by much of the general public. Despite all this, I’m fine with him just being a cartoon bully because it’s more palatable and not wrong. But you could also make him so much nastier than even the workshop if you wanted to go darker.

#Stex #starlight express #technically this is character hate but it’s about how he’s great at that as intended so it’s maintagged #because he really is such a compelling and horrible character the more you look into it #probably the major character i’d most want to play because i’d incorporate a lot of this to make him nastier #he is the embodiment of so many past and present rail issues in the US and weirdly effective abroad too #reference #also lol this is why you will never see me talk very positively of Uncle Pete (or other big US railroads)#the fallen flags i’m fascinated by are more like watching a train crash than stanning. based on who made the funniest bad decisions #can’t overstate that i’m also fine with greaseball being played more stupid and cartoonish and less malicious #it’s genuinely very hard to go wrong with replica greaseball for me because he works in so many ways

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