ALCophiles: C-420 Drawings?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I need drawings for the ALCo C420, any ideas? ANy help would be appreciated. Jay.

2

I thought they were called ALCoholics. [:D]

Plans were published in Railroad Model Craftsman May 1983 and May 1985 issues.

Amazing what you can find in the “Index of Magazines.” (link at top of this page)

3

I don’t see the link you’re referring to, however, I looked up "ALCo C-420"and “C-420” in the magazine index (my own link) and only got articles on the Lionel C-420s. So, thanks for the info, I should have one or both of those issues, (that’s the reason to save your MRing mags).

4

My mistake. Thinking of the old forum layout.

When doing a search, don’t use any upper case or dashes. I entered “alco c420” (without the quotes) and got 30 entries.

5

I tried as you suggested and that worked! And I do have both issues.

I think ALCophiles are the ones that actually know a lot and ALCoholics covers the rest of us. [:D]

6

If your looking for drawings that you can download? Take a look at this site http://paintshop.railfan.net and go to the ALCo/MLW section.

Dan

7

http://trainiax.net/mescaleloco.htm For (almost) all your scale drawing needs. Cheers! ~METRO

8

I haven’t figured out why, but that seems to work on most search engines.

9

Hi one other place to take a look at is over at Wither’s publishing. I’m pretty certain that they did a book on the C420 in their diesel era book series. You should be able to buy it from them off their website. Sorry don’t have the link available thought I did.

Rob

10

Thanks all for the info and suggestions.

The point of this exercise was to determine the correct measurements of the trucks. The Lima/MRC/Rivarossi C-420 (I have 3 of them) always looked to me like the trucks were longer than all the other ALCo AAR trucks out there. I had thought that maybe the C-420 had a longer wheel base.

Someone gave me one of the original Lima versions with the truck-motor. My intention is to rebuild the chassis and use either the Atlas, P2K or Athearn AAR trucks and power it up with a Mashima motor.

It turns out that the model’s wheelbase is correct, but the height of the side frame is shorter than it should be (by about 1/16th of an inch) which gives the illusion of the truck being longer. I’m now considering modifying the other 3 chassis to match the fourth. I’ll probably wait until number 4 is done and see how they look all lashed up together. (They’re all D&H units, 2 lightning stripes, 1 ex-LV and the 4th will be an ex-Lehigh & Hudson River).

Thanks again.