theory relating auto driving to preference for steam vs diesel

[agentatascadero]

Fellow simmers, This thought occured to me after years of simming, not to mention decades of auto driving. I have a strong preference for running steam on my sim, and just love that RD works well for steam. It seems my preference relates to working the cutoff, something I explain to non -RRers as a continuously variable manual "transmission". In autos, I have always been a manual shift kind of guy...the automatic transmission vehicles I drive occasionally always seem to be in the wrong gear...so I wind up fussing with the shifter frequently anyway...and, running diesel on the sim, is, well, kind of boring to spend so much time in run 8, grinding along with nothing to do. I know that, as RRs dieselized, engineers broke into two distinctive groups, those who prefer diesel, and the steam guys, and I wonder what kind of cars those guys drove....did the steam guys prefer stick shifts? AA

[USRailFan]

In the 50s I'd think manual transmissions would still be the norm in cars, even in the US? Wasn't it in the 60s where automatic transmissions really "took off"?

[agentatascadero]

No, lots of automatics, even in the post war '40s...remember "fliud drive" (self shifting, no clutch) of De Soto days? Or the early Chevy Hydromatic? Take it from one who became licensed in '57. AA