I have ran an assortmant of EMD/GE road, and, switcher diesels. I was wondering what an Alco feels like? How do they run? Are they reliable?
BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM fshooooooo with the old style throttle and old school horn rope (at least the ones ive been on)
a well-maintained Alco is durn near bulletproof, particularly the later 251 engine.
As jchnhtfd said if the Alco is well maintained it is a good loco. The problem is that most roads maintain them like an EMD, and the procedures you use on an EMD do not work well on an Alco. The reverse is true. When D&H bought the SD45 demonstrators the first time they were difficult to keep operational because the maintenance crews did not know how to work on an EMD.
But you can say the same for nearly every builder. If it is maintained properly it doesn’t matter if it is an EMD, GE, Alco, Balwin, FM, Davenport, Plymouth, WEMCo, or whatever.
Alcos are great if you:
Are in the position of never having to actually perform maintenance on them, or, more importantly, pay for maintaining them,
Are in the position of never having to run them,
Or are just a fan because there weren’t as many of them as other makes. There weren’t as many as other makes for good reasons. They were more expensive to maintain, less reliable (turbos needed more maintenance than EMD turbos, for instance), and, with the exception of the PAs, didn’t ride as well as comparable EMDs. On road switchers, the controls weren’t arranged as well as on EMDs - they weren’t as “handy” to run. Oh, they were good low speed luggers, but not THAT much better than other makes.
I’ve run Centuries, PAs, DLs, RSs . . .
Old Timer
Dirty, greasy, oil covered mess, that’s what I remember about Alco’s. The walkways themselves were oily but I’m sure a lot of that had to do with the maintenance they were receiving. Another thing that I remember was the ride, it seemed like you felt every little bump in the rail and they had a more solid sort of a sound while going down the road, I don’t know if it was because there was even less sound insulation in the cab than the EMD’s, or what.
Rope whistles, that goes back, Coborn, I remember that now.
Old Timer, there were those who thought, if nothing else, an Alco would pull everything out of the yard and take the yard office, too.
Given the information above, by two engineers, why did some railroads favor Alcos so much? S P & S comes to mind, but I know there were others that were big Alco users.
LV loved em, but they’re not around anymore either…
Adrianspeeder
GBW was all ALCo…[:D]
Sayeth Murphy Siding -
“Given the information above, by two engineers, why did some railroads favor Alcos so much? S P & S comes to mind, but I know there were others that were big Alco users.” Hard to say, exactly, but you’ve always got folks that will overlook drawbacks in their search for satisfaction. The Alco users were just willing to overlook more drawbacks than the others . . .
Old Timer
Were they cheaper to buy initially? Did they get maintained better by roads like the SP&S and the GB&W because that was their fleet?
I don’t know why railfans like Alco’s. The 244 engine was a bit of a disaster, Alco exported 251’s overseas to many countries (apart from nearly 600 units exported to Australia they went to Spain, Greece and Pakistan. Technically, you could even include Mexico. Didn’t MLW build all the Canadian engines) and some of them are still running. I love hearing Alco’s purring past in the night on transfers, they do sound good. Kind of like a purring bus engine. Nearly all the Alco’s I saw here in Australia combinied an Alco engine with GE752 traction motors. That was why they had grunt at low speeds. They were incredibly quick off the mark (I remember an Alco’s last run on a pass in 93. Into Run 8 before the brakes were off…Within a mile we were doing 60 and still accelarating).
I don’t know any crews that likes Alco’s (unless they are railfans). They spew oil everywhere…Listen to Old Timer, GP15crazy, he knows his stuff.
As valleyX said they can be rough riders. After a cabride in an Alco at 70 MPH you would be riding in an EMD at the same speed and you’d need the speedo to convince you that you were doing trackspeed.
I don’t know about the US, but in the early 50’s ALCO sales reps over here were able to undercut GM and sold 20 RSC-3’s. And they didn’t stop buying until 1982. By then the traction motors were supplied by MITSUBISHI! What the?
THe reason why ALCO went bust? I think it had to do with their attitude. EMD had sales reps out in the field trying to help the railroads and report back any problems that their engines were experiencing, so that they could fix them. ALCO had the attitude that their product was already perfect, any problems that were being experienced must have been the railroads fault, surely not our brilliantly designed and built engines!
“Follow the Flag”
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi- There lies the (Rail)road to progress
Good: NH was mostly Alco, with 60 out of 74 DL109’s. Although it couldn’t match the E6 on, for example the C&NW, MILW, they were well maintained. Philip Hatch of the NH said, “they pulled us through the war”. An old-timer was asked his favorite on the Maybrook line. The 0400’s, FA-1’s.
Bad: NH C425 century’s bought at the same time as the GE U25B. Poor ride and workmanship. NH went back for 15 more U25’s, no more C425’s. I think the BLE had an agreement with the RR to not put the Alco’s in the lead due to poor ride. Don’t forget the UP C855’s failed on their first trip out due to defective wiring.
In 1941 Southern Railway bought two sets of EMD E6s (A-B) for the Tennessean, to operate between Bristol and Memphis. At the same time they bought two sets of Alco DL109-110s (A-B) to operate between Cincinnati and Macon, Ga.
The DLs were nothing but trouble. They eventually had another A-B set and all had to go back to Alco for reworking. The 539 engines were OK for switchers but no good in service requiring extended periods of full throttle operation. They vibrated so badly that they broke water and air pipes and even broke glass out of some of the windows.
One set of the E-6s went through WWII and never missed a scheduled trip. In other words, except for its monthly inspections, it made every trip. The other set missed one trip - one of the air intake grilles was damaged by a water crane, and it had to miss a trip for repairs.
To me, that says it all. Alco did improve over the years, but never caught EMD which improved even faster.
BTW, you can read about this in a back issue (I don’t know the date) of TIES, the magazine of the Southern Railway Historical Association. The SRHA has a website, and lists the availability of back issues.
Old Timer