Which do you like best? Steam or Diesel/electric?

When I was young I preferred steam by a wide margin but as I’ve gotten older I’ve shifted to diesels, and I’ve also shifted from the transition era to the contemporary era. SD70s, ES44s, GP40s etc are where my interests are now, so I voted diesel.

There's less scope for having steamers purely on grounds of current cost and some of my fave operating features have been incorporated in diesels. That said I could not distinguish between them but I agree that electrics have less appeal. You can't do much with the sounds of electrics so features like steam exhaust and operating pantographs have been offered. I won't say anything about the original Lionel Acela's other features as these are exceptionally troublesome and that does get some people worked up; they'd probably rather not be reminded of them!

I should change my vote, lol; I like the prewar electrics a lot too.

I think that the OP was using diesel/electric in the correct sense of a diesel that generates onboard power for electric traction motors but we’ve expanded that to three categories. No matter as no one has voted for electrics like the Little Joe anyway and I only have the one I do (South Shore) for nostalgic reasons!

Agree about electrics looking odd w/o catenary. However there is something about the GG-1 and Bi Polar engines that have a strong attraction.

That pitch black PC GG-1 was what hauled my tail back and forth to college from Philadelphia to Washington DC. Talk about making an impression!

Darth Vader would have loved that engine!

And the Bi Polar just has a certain swagger that you can't beat especially in the Milwaukee Road colors.

It was odd for me in that all I wanted to run was steam engines and all I had. But keeping to the mid 50s era, Diesels have slowly appeared on layout and have traded several steam engines for diesel engines.