I watched “Dirty Jobs” on Discovery the other day. They were at Cape Canaveral (sp) and featuring the shuttle crawler. Apparently there’s a couple (or more?) ALCo V16 engines that power it! Are these the same kind that would’ve been in a loco? If they’re good enough for NASA, what happened with RR service?
Alco locomotives still exist on shortlines and leasing companies. Here in Chicago we had a very early (1930’s) Alco at one of the tank car plants in East Chicago up until very recently and the Belt Railway finaly dropped their Alcos maybe ten years ago now. In the formative years of WW2 Alco was only allowed to produce switchers and EMD was primarily road engines. Consequently when Alco got into the road engine business there were some engine crankshaft dependability issues. It was far easier for EMD to scale down an engine than for Alco to scale up. As a result Alco, Baldwin, Lima Hamilton and Fairbanks Morse all went by the wayside for various reasons. The fact that the shuttle mover may or may not have Alco engines could have been an obscure government requirement as they also have a switcher that may be an Alco (I forget). As railroads got into second generation engines they rightly decided to standardize on one or two manufacturers so they could lessen the cost of spare parts required to keep them running. In addition they probably developed preferences for EMD primarily. FM which had a very dependable opposed piston diesel used in ships found that the rocking and twisting of locomotive frames gave them fits. By the time all the bugs were worked out EMD was head and shoulders above the competition. Alco did have some followers but not enough to stave off the inevitable decision to close down. Of the above mentioned companies they lasted the longest.
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They are essentially identical to the 251s used in locomotives.
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The Alco 251 is a fine engine, but there’s a lot, lot more to a locomotive than just the engine. Locomotives are an integrated package of engine, accessories, electrical transmission, running gear, air brakes, and frame, carbody and cab. Deficiency in any one of these areas, or in the integration effort, brings down the whole. Locomotives are judged by railroads in terms of initial cost, operating cost (fuel, spare parts consumption, repair cost), availability, and reliability. Deficiency in any one of these brings down the whole. Compared to EMD and GE, Alco was unable to provide equivalent performance of the whole package.
Again, the 251 is a fine engine. There are many in service today in a broad variety of applications and likely to be many in service for some years to come.
RWM
Wasn’t ALCo’s biggest downfall the fact that GE, one of their competitors, supplied the electrical gear used on ALCo locomotives? I can’t imagine that it’s easy to be a locomotive builder when a company that supplies an important part of said locomotives decides to start manufacturing their own locos.
You answered your own question. Fundamentally the role of the locomotive designer/builder is to design and integrate the systems of the locomotive until a complete, functional package results. If you are a locomotive builder, and a vendor has for 30 years provided the design and integration of a major system of your locomotive, and one day that vendor decides they’re going to build their own locomotives in competition with you, what do you think will be the quality of the attention they will pay to your needs in the future? How many technical advances do you think your vendor’s electrical team will share with you the same day they share them with their own locomotive team? And how many railroads do you think will believe that GE-provided electrical gear for Alco locomotives is going to be as good as GE-provided electrical gear for GE locomotives? (What rational person would short themselves?)
GE was really a vendor to Alco, not a partner with Alco. The following is speculation on my part. At some point GE decided that there was opportunity in the locomotive market to gain more market share from EMD than Alco had or was likely to have, and apparently concluded it would be easier to recognize that opportunity on its own than by partnering with Alco. The interesting question is why GE chose to forego a full partnership with Alco and use the proven Alco 251 engine, or just buy Alco outright. Apparently GE decided that the 251 wasn’t SO good that it couldn’t come up with something on its own that was as good or better, or, that to obtain the right to use the 251 was
There are actually a fair number of Alcos still running for their age. Here in Milwaukee we have an S-Series switcher working a grain silo down at the docks. Up until it’s death in 1993, the Green Bay Western railroad, which had a line terminating just north of Milwaukee, was exclusively Alco, with many 251 engined locomotives. I remember seening the crocodiles (RSD15s) trundleing down the line, those were really identifible locomotives, with their patched LS&I paint.
Acording to the greenbaywestern.com’s roster page, many of the Alcos from that line were sold to others when the railroad was taken over by Wisconsin Central. Several are listed as still in service.
Another place I’ve seen Alcos reciently was in Lockport NY on the Falls Road, the’ve got some RS11s. Canadian Pacific retired their last MLWs (Alco’s Canadian manufaturer) in the 90s and Amtrak had Alcos that lasted into the 90s as well.
Cheers!
~METRO
IIRC, GE bought the rights to a Cooper Bessemer engine, changed it a bit and branded it as their “FDL” engine, right? If that is the case, what was CB’s primary market for it’s engines previously and what did GE change in their design?
Cooper-Bessemer engines could be found in the marine and stationary engine markets. The same was true for Macintosh & Seymour, Winton and De La Vergne.
I’m familiar with Macintosh & Seymour and Winton, but what was De La Vergne?
Google strikes again - De La Vergne engines were apparently used in the Baldwin VO series switchers. I saw several references to Baldwin plus De La Vergne. Their engines also appear to have been used in stationary applications.
I have fond memories of visiting the Kennedy Space Center as a boy (1975) and marveling at the crawler transporters. The 16-251 Alcos are the same prime movers that were used in the CENTURY series locomotives. The machines themselves were built by Marion shovel co. and use the same crawler track technology that was used in the companies giant strip mining shovels(all of which are now retired, modern stripping draglines use a “walking” system rather than caterpillar tracks).
They clearly were an inspiration to George Lucas in the design of the “sandcrawler” vehicle in the original star wars movie.
The rights and support of the 251 engine are currently owned by, of all companies, Fairbanks-Morse. Check it out: http://www.fairbanksmorse.com/locomotive_engines.php
Apparently F-M is still producing, supporting and upgrading the 251 (Now called the FM/ALCO 251F) as well as their original OP models.
The most interesting aspect to me seemed to be that they are still marketing the engine, at least tokenly as a Locomotive engine.
Cheers!
~METRO
The 251 engine is still being built under license by Diesel Locomotive Works of Varanasi, India. India is probably the Alco capital of the world, with lots of WDM2’s (RSD29) on the broad gauge and YDM4’s (DL535) on the meter gauge.
DLW has apparently come up with an improved turbocharger that lessens the propensity of 251 engines to smoke heavily when the throttle is opened.