Wallace W. Abby David P. Morgan absorbs the scene at Englewood, Chicago, in 1953 at the beginning of his tenure as Trains editor.

The magazine was facing its own crisis in 1953. Of all the technical innovations that helped railroads cut costs, none brought more trouble for Morgan and his magazine than the diesel locomotive. By the time Morgan had settled into the editor’s office, that holy of holies among the enthusiasts, the reciprocating steam locomotive, had all but disappeared from main-line railroading.

Some rail enthusiasts believed that the pending end of steam signaled the end of the railfan avocation and, therefore, the end of the line for a magazine such as Trains. Or so, anyway, thought Lucius Beebe. The doyen of popular railroad writers had published a book that Morgan had faulted for its vitriolic attack on the diesel locomotive.
A rhetorical firestorm ensued. Beebe thundered in a February 1953 letter that the "pestilence" of diesel locomotives had "removed railroading almost altogether from the consciousness of Americans." The steam era "had a claim on the imagination and a hold on the romantic sensibilities," but now railroading was "just another industrial convenience without personality." In Beebe’s view, this change doomed Trains to pure antiquarianism or "you will have to fold" because readers will refuse to pay for half-tones of "identical" diesel locomotives.

Morgan’s reply was uncharacteristically bland, perhaps in deference to Beebe’s stature. He referred to stable circulation figures, then conceded that the steam engine represented "the most spectacular single device in railroading." To say that the romance and the avocation it inspired faced extinction, however, hinged upon a "thesis which simply will not hold water." And yet, as if to confirm Beebe’s claim indirectly, the same issue carried a Morgan-penned photo caption on the advantages of Centralized Traffic Control that featured a 4-8-4 locomotive at the center of the image.

The Beebe-Morgan exchange merits attention because it encapsulated the broader challenge that Morgan had to address. As Beebe predicted, circulation did, in fact, slide from 39,000 the year Morgan took over to an all-time low of 34,000 in 1958.
Nevertheless, Morgan’s faith in a brighter tomorrow turned out to be justified. Circulation began to rise in 1959 (the same year that steam holdout Norfolk & Western announced plans for complete dieselization) and reached 40,177 in 1962, which was also the first year that Trains turned a profit. By 1970, circulation had grown to 57,378, and by the end of his tenure, it reached 80,000.

Morgan had an interesting take on the situation in an extended commentary that he wrote a decade after Beebe’s blast …