One C425 became a movie star C425 #1013 on the New York & Lake Erie was used in the 1987 movie Planes Trains & Automobiles star Steve Martin and the now late John Candy ! The 1013 was built in 1965 for the Wabash and went the N&W after the merger it is a very rare High Nose unit as well it last was used in revenue service in 2007 but has run since that year.
I am from South Dayton, NY and I used to ride behind the 6101 on Excursion trains back in the 1990's ! The unit went to the Delaware-Lackawanna RR with a new number of 2423 it was originally a PRR unit. Atlas made a model in HO scale with it in a rare Morrison Knudsen yellow and black paint scheme and the real life unit was still in the M-K paint scheme when it came to the New York & Lake Erie in the late 1980's before it was repainted into the NY&LE colors in about the year 1993 the same year that I was born in ! Look for images of the 6101 and the 1013 the 2 NY&LE locomotives on the internet plus UA-cam videos as well !
I was looking in the "Second Diesel Spotters Guide" and noticed Alco did have some impressive production numbers. From the late 30s to 1969 they did produce around 8500 diesel locomotives. Over 30 years that's about 5 locomotives a week, not counting steam. It doesn't mean they didn't struggle, but it shows the railroads must have had confidence in them.
What a GREAT series on the ALCO company and it's products. I can't even begin to imagine the work you put into your series. Thanks so much for making it available to us on youtube. 5 Stars!!
I have loved the C425s, the Delaware Lackawanna railroad is probably the biggest owner of working original ALCO diesels, it’s so awesome watching them and I love this documentary about them
Great series on the Alco road switcher family. Added new details on the RS series. Unfortunately for Alco they repeated a material mistake with the C628 engines 251C as with the 244 engines. Just when they were gaining sells with the C628 they run into problems with engine failures due to the material that they used for the pistons. They used cast aluminum pistons on the C628 which resulted in piston cracking after awhile. They redesigned the piston with steel piston caps but the damage was done to the engines reputation. The C425 was an AC version of the C424. The electric system was updated to an AC version the same as a U25B. It used an alternator instead of a generator.
Great series! Most complete coverage I’ve seen on the Alco road switchers. I wonder what ever happened to the rather large collection of Alcos that were parked mostly inoperative, at the Saginaw Bay Southern , now Lake State railroad in Bay City Michigan. When I was up there in the early 2000’s they had more Alcos in the year than I had ever seen in one place.
I live by Bay City, and sadly all but one of lake state's alcos have been scrapped, sent overseas, or cannibalized for parts on other short lines. The last unit that is in Saginaw currently, is RS-3 #469.
As a Long Island Railfan I love the Long Island Railroad ALCO C420s I have one in HO scale in the 1964 world's fair scheme no.203 I have yet to run it because I don't have track yet Also I need more rolling stock I mostly out on a hunt for some LIRR rolling stock once that have enough rolling stock and track is will be able to break in Long Island Railroad 203
Great video. Thank you. On my layout my CN 636M from Bowser with sound is my favourite. Fantastic sound, fine tuned. And I just got the C425 with sound from Atlas, West Chester Railroad. Needs a bit of fine tuning but I'm already loving her. Got a Bachmann RS3 as well with basic sound. Again very happy with it. Lovely locos.
2 other Century series locomotives were also built.Due to their few numbers they were not mentioned here. Alco built a ABA team of the C-855's for the Union Pacific in 1964. They have been said to be Alco's biggest locomotive failures. They were scrapped in 1972. Also Alco built 3 C-643DH(DH-643) diesel hydraulic locomotives for the S.P. in 1964. They were considered to be experimental locomotives to go along with the German Krauss-Maffei Hydraulic locomotives. The Alco's were scrapped in 1973.
I actually saw some of these types of centuries in Montreal in the Canadian Railway Museum outside in the Canadian Pacific in the red, black and white stripes livery
After the failure of A.E. GOODWIN, in Sydney, Australia, the ALCo licence was taken up by Comeng, Commonwealth Engineering. Comeng built 27 × 3,600hp M636 locos for the iron mines in the Pilbara, Western Australia. While 11 × 2,400hp, CE618's were built for Westrail, at the Comeng plant in Bassendean, Perth, Western Australia, between '77-'79. Source, Motive Power, issue number 78.
Great video. (Note: FM only took the 251 series. Which was what GE and I believe Wabtec had obtained. To my knowledge, there is no holdings or new fabrication for/of 539 or 244 parts.) Love all the ALCO's... !!! Thanks for the video!
Watched all 5 of your Alco road switchers and I loved them. Alco Diesels are my absolute favorites. Modern diesels are so boring but, ironically, when I hear a GE I think of Alco's. Might be the engines sounding similar. Great job on these
LIRR’s ALCO C420 fleet were numbered 200-221 (First order, classified as L-1 in 1963) leased by PENNSY, the then owner of the LIRR. The second order were numbered 222-229 and owned by the MTA, LIRR‘s current parent agency. (Second order, classified as L-2 in 1968) These were the final (8) units the American Locomotive Company ever built before closing down for good. The latter units last ran in 1989/1990 and majority if not all were scrapped by Naporano Iron & Scrap Metal in Newark, NJ shortly after.
The choice of ALCO’s C420 came down to their having been built in New York. Pennsylvania was sensitive to the increasing political pressure in the tri state area.
Great video. Centuries are my very favorite engines. The L&N had lots of Centuries, many C-420s. Would love to have heard about the N&W C-628s that were sold to CNW and served so well and so long (almost to the 90's) in upper Michigan and Wisconsin. Also the C-636s on the SP&S that made it into the Burlington Northern.
One thing that hindered the sales of the C-636 was the repeated failure of traction motors on the demonstrator set. A dead giveaway on the C430 and the C636 were the high adhesion trucks instead of the AAR trucks.
Alco products has been providing parts for Alco locomotives since the parent company went out of business. The same goes for the other minor manufacturers like Baldwin Lima Hamilton and Fairbanks Morse. Fairbanks Morse diesel engines are used in backup generators for many factories and plants. Much much more than they had for locomotive.
One note: the Roberval & Saguenay is *not* in western Canada; it's a mining railway in Quebec, about 300 miles due north of Conway, NH. Also, it's surprising that LIRR had trouble with parts; MLW was still building new 251s well into the 1980s.
My understandinf was that PRR did not purchase the c420s. The LIRR company purchased the first group in '64. The MTA purchased the second group (with different trucks) in '68. The LIRR was cut loose from the PRR in 1948 or 49 to sink or swim.
I have old trains magazines from the '60s and the railroads all talk about how when the Alaska pipeline is finished they will have a steady supply of fuel and not be held by the Arabs. And alco's had much better gas mileage than EMT with their two-stroke diesels.
you forgot the first "century" ..."c 415" and the high nose 424 or 425, cant remember right off lol it is the Alco that pulled the train in the movie "planes, trains and automobiles" also, the c430 had the first ac/dc traction motors. and could you imagine if Alco and GE could have merged ??......"Alco C 4000ac series" ... look like most tier 4 now, only with nose and rear contours. they would look crazy.
I don’t recall Microsoft ever having a version of Windows with the code name “Mojave”; Apple Inc. did, though (it was 10.14). I remember Windows “Longhorn”, though.
Howzit : As Much As The Much-Favoured ALCO * Growl * Sound Is Known To Be Iconic / Unique; The Same Can Be Said For The Belching Black Smoke ! Why Is This So In Comparison To Other Contemporary Diesel Locos ? Much Thanks + Regards / John
Not so they were very popular on the l i Double R because with the hood in front of you if you had a car pull out in front of you you were safer because you had the whole engine in front of you to take the front of the impact
Now imagine if all of the bankrupt railroads instead of getting financing to buy new locomotives had to instead rebuild the ones that they had. I'm actually how many Fairbanks more Baldwin switches Alco switches and Road units would have been rebuilt and updated for reliability which would have been still cheaper than buying new locomotives which drove them into bankruptcy.
The Long Island Railroad had 8,000 car loads a year. They had very poor customer service. The New York and Atlantic took over Freight Service from the LIRR and it went from 8,000 carloads to 37,000 car loads because they gave their shippers good service. The bigger railroad could have done the same thing but their attitude was piss poor.
Please forgive me but correct usage of words is important. Tact is how one deals with others. Kevin has no tact, he is blunt and often rude. For example. I believe the word you were intending to use is tack. This is a nautical term referring to changing directions as in tacking into the wind. Excellent work on your video.
Sorry for my late response. I'm actually using the "tact" short for tactics. It's actually British slang which I picked up form watching shows like top gear and Keeping up appearances. Its also short for tacking, a sailing method of going against the wind which, coincidentally is also what Alco was having to do at the time to compete with GM and GE at that time. Thanks for watching!
You mentioned SP 3100 isn’t really a U25B. That’s not really true. Is a GP38-2 still a GP38? Yes, but the -2 has upgraded electrical components. Still same thing though. Is a U25BE still a U25B? Yes, but it has electrical components from a U33C, essentially an upgrade. Also, 3100 isn’t used as the main switcher at SCRM (formerly OERM). Usually SP 1006 or OERM 1956 are used as the switchers. If you would like to donate the cost of completely backdating 3100 to the original 20 notch throttle and other components, I’m sure the museum would happily accept it. Otherwise, don’t insult efforts to preserve history. Quite frankly, I like 3100 the way it is. It’s earned the nickname “Cadillac” by museum volunteers.
I did not mean to insult anyone involved in the restoration of locomotive. Quite frankly, nor do I see what warrants that allegation. No were in this video did I make any comments about history being something that we don't need to preserve, nor did I insult anyone involved in the preservation of history. In fact, this video is focused on the preservation of history. Keeping the memory of these locomotives alive for a new generation to discover them. All I did was to point out, and being factual in doing so, that a few operation C425's still exist with their original specs while the closest one can get to an operating u25b is the one at SCRM, there are no originals in operation anyware, at least that I'm aware of. The words I used may have come off as harsh, but I was just trying to be clear that the unit is not an original u25b. Also, I did not know that the unit was no longer being used as a switcher, good to hear they got her back into mainline service again! Please note, that other alterations done to the unit are increase in HP and the swap of the control stand with an AAR type, these were done by the SP before it was taken delivery of by the museum. Is it right to call a retromodded 57" Chevy (great car) a fully original 57" Chevy? No. Are both car types beautiful works of art? Yes!
The Australian ones were made by A.E. GOODWIN, not GOODWILL. And yes you did butcher the names of the towns. But back in the '70's and '80's, ALCo ruled in the heavy haul iron ore trains. BIG trains, even back then. Huge things now, powered by the usual suspects,EMD SD 70's, GE things.
You really need to get your facts together as you miss a lot of information in this video. Also your Geography is way off. Both CN and CP ran C424 units. Also Alco and MLW were the same company only difference was Country of origin.
One C425 became a movie star C425 #1013 on the New York & Lake Erie was used in the 1987 movie Planes Trains & Automobiles star Steve Martin and the now late John Candy !
The 1013 was built in 1965 for the Wabash and went the N&W after the merger it is a very rare High Nose unit as well it last was used in revenue service in 2007 but has run since that year.
As always, nicely done.
Thanks!
I am from South Dayton, NY and I used to ride behind the 6101 on Excursion trains back in the 1990's !
The unit went to the Delaware-Lackawanna RR with a new number of 2423 it was originally a PRR unit.
Atlas made a model in HO scale with it in a rare Morrison Knudsen yellow and black paint scheme and the real life unit was still in the M-K paint scheme when it came to the New York & Lake Erie in the late 1980's before it was repainted into the NY&LE colors in about the year 1993 the same year that I was born in !
Look for images of the 6101 and the 1013 the 2 NY&LE locomotives on the internet plus UA-cam videos as well !
Arkansas and missouri railroad still has some alco C-420s
Holy Mackinaw what an info-packed video with great footage...ten thumbs up
I was looking in the "Second Diesel Spotters Guide" and noticed Alco did have some impressive production numbers. From the late 30s to 1969 they did produce around 8500 diesel locomotives. Over 30 years that's about 5 locomotives a week, not counting steam.
It doesn't mean they didn't struggle, but it shows the railroads must have had confidence in them.
Thank you for putting this up.
Très belle vidéo, merci.
“Best of all, it’s an ALCO!”
(Complete with ample Soot!)
What a GREAT series on the ALCO company and it's products. I can't even begin to imagine the work you put into your series. Thanks so much for making it available to us on youtube. 5 Stars!!
I have loved the C425s, the Delaware Lackawanna railroad is probably the biggest owner of working original ALCO diesels, it’s so awesome watching them and I love this documentary about them
I Love watching the MA&N still...Their Alcos just sound so cool
Great series on the Alco road switcher family. Added new details on the RS series. Unfortunately for Alco they repeated a material mistake with the C628 engines 251C as with the 244 engines. Just when they were gaining sells with the C628 they run into problems with engine failures due to the material that they used for the pistons. They used cast aluminum pistons on the C628 which resulted in piston cracking after awhile. They redesigned the piston with steel piston caps but the damage was done to the engines reputation.
The C425 was an AC version of the C424. The electric system was updated to an AC version the same as a U25B. It used an alternator instead of a generator.
The C425 and U25B used the same main generator (made by GE of course).
The RS 1 AND S1 AND S2 best ever still running......
Need a MLW video, Alco’s were used extensively in Canada.
Great series! Most complete coverage I’ve seen on the Alco road switchers. I wonder what ever happened to the rather large collection of Alcos that were parked mostly inoperative, at the Saginaw Bay Southern , now Lake State railroad in Bay City Michigan. When I was up there in the early 2000’s they had more Alcos in the year than I had ever seen in one place.
I live by Bay City, and sadly all but one of lake state's alcos have been scrapped, sent overseas, or cannibalized for parts on other short lines. The last unit that is in Saginaw currently, is RS-3 #469.
They should have kept one of the C-425's and repainted them in original D&M colors and markings and preserved it in a museum.
Good video ! , Alco Centuries are some of my favorite locomotives. Thanks Alco Diesel Guy 😁👍
Excellent series :)
As a Long Island Railfan I love the Long Island Railroad ALCO C420s I have one in HO scale in the 1964 world's fair scheme no.203 I have yet to run it because I don't have track yet Also I need more rolling stock I mostly out on a hunt for some LIRR rolling stock once that have enough rolling stock and track is will be able to break in Long Island Railroad 203
Great video. Thank you. On my layout my CN 636M from Bowser with sound is my favourite. Fantastic sound, fine tuned. And I just got the C425 with sound from Atlas, West Chester Railroad. Needs a bit of fine tuning but I'm already loving her. Got a Bachmann RS3 as well with basic sound. Again very happy with it. Lovely locos.
Yeah the HO Bowser Alco's are great to have on a layout. Good Locomotives
That was impressive! Excellent video.
The most successful of the Centuries was the 636's used in the Pilbra in Australia.
2 other Century series locomotives were also built.Due to their few numbers they were not mentioned here. Alco built a ABA team of the C-855's for the Union Pacific in 1964. They have been said to be Alco's biggest locomotive failures. They were scrapped in 1972. Also Alco built 3 C-643DH(DH-643) diesel hydraulic locomotives for the S.P. in 1964. They were considered to be experimental locomotives to go along with the German Krauss-Maffei Hydraulic locomotives. The Alco's were scrapped in 1973.
He missed the C415 oddball too
I actually saw some of these types of centuries in Montreal in the Canadian Railway Museum outside in the Canadian Pacific in the red, black and white stripes livery
After the failure of A.E. GOODWIN, in Sydney, Australia, the ALCo licence was taken up by Comeng, Commonwealth Engineering. Comeng built 27 × 3,600hp M636 locos for the iron mines in the Pilbara, Western Australia. While 11 × 2,400hp, CE618's were built for Westrail, at the Comeng plant in Bassendean, Perth, Western Australia, between '77-'79. Source, Motive Power, issue number 78.
Great video.
(Note: FM only took the 251 series. Which was what GE and I believe Wabtec had obtained. To my knowledge, there is no holdings or new fabrication for/of 539 or 244 parts.)
Love all the ALCO's... !!!
Thanks for the video!
Watched all 5 of your Alco road switchers and I loved them. Alco Diesels are my absolute favorites. Modern diesels are so boring but, ironically, when I hear a GE I think of Alco's. Might be the engines sounding similar. Great job on these
I hear nothing of the older GE's in all the newer, all look the same locomotives!!
LIRR’s ALCO C420 fleet were numbered 200-221 (First order, classified as L-1 in 1963) leased by PENNSY, the then owner of the LIRR.
The second order were numbered 222-229 and owned by the MTA, LIRR‘s current parent agency. (Second order, classified as L-2 in 1968) These were the final (8) units the American Locomotive Company ever built before closing down for good. The latter units last ran in 1989/1990 and majority if not all were scrapped by Naporano Iron & Scrap Metal in Newark, NJ shortly after.
The choice of ALCO’s C420 came down to their having been built in New York. Pennsylvania was sensitive to the increasing political pressure in the tri state area.
@@cmdrflake that makes sense !
Great video. Centuries are my very favorite engines. The L&N had lots of Centuries, many C-420s. Would love to have heard about the N&W C-628s that were sold to CNW and served so well and so long (almost to the 90's) in upper Michigan and Wisconsin. Also the C-636s on the SP&S that made it into the Burlington Northern.
This explains why the NSWGR went ALCO. Namely the extent of the fuel savings over EMD made up for any increased maintenance cost.
One thing that hindered the sales of the C-636 was the repeated failure of traction motors on the demonstrator set.
A dead giveaway on the C430 and the C636 were the high adhesion trucks instead of the AAR trucks.
I believe Bowser made HO scale models of the WNY&P C430’s around 2012-2013.
Alco products has been providing parts for Alco locomotives since the parent company went out of business. The same goes for the other minor manufacturers like Baldwin Lima Hamilton and Fairbanks Morse. Fairbanks Morse diesel engines are used in backup generators for many factories and plants. Much much more than they had for locomotive.
Great video as always! Would you consider covering the Alco C855s that were built for Union Pacific?
Well, well done series!👏🏻🚂
One note: the Roberval & Saguenay is *not* in western Canada; it's a mining railway in Quebec, about 300 miles due north of Conway, NH.
Also, it's surprising that LIRR had trouble with parts; MLW was still building new 251s well into the 1980s.
My understandinf was that PRR did not purchase the c420s. The LIRR company purchased the first group in '64. The MTA purchased the second group (with different trucks) in '68. The LIRR was cut loose from the PRR in 1948 or 49 to sink or swim.
251 c and es were on navy ships
I have old trains magazines from the '60s and the railroads all talk about how when the Alaska pipeline is finished they will have a steady supply of fuel and not be held by the Arabs. And alco's had much better gas mileage than EMT with their two-stroke diesels.
Nice video!
Awesome!!!
Great video.
you forgot the first "century" ..."c 415" and the high nose 424 or 425, cant remember right off lol it is the Alco that pulled the train in the movie "planes, trains and automobiles" also, the c430 had the first ac/dc traction motors.
and could you imagine if Alco and GE could have merged ??......"Alco C 4000ac series" ... look like most tier 4 now, only with nose and rear contours. they would look crazy.
I don’t recall Microsoft ever having a version of Windows with the code name “Mojave”; Apple Inc. did, though (it was 10.14). I remember Windows “Longhorn”, though.
Do you have any videos of the s-2alcos on the B&O?
Howzit : As Much As The Much-Favoured ALCO * Growl * Sound Is Known To Be Iconic / Unique; The Same Can Be Said For The Belching Black Smoke ! Why Is This So In Comparison To Other Contemporary Diesel Locos ? Much Thanks + Regards / John
We all know those BC Centuries were ex EL.
What about the mlw varients?
Not so they were very popular on the l i Double R because with the hood in front of you if you had a car pull out in front of you you were safer because you had the whole engine in front of you to take the front of the impact
Now imagine if all of the bankrupt railroads instead of getting financing to buy new locomotives had to instead rebuild the ones that they had. I'm actually how many Fairbanks more Baldwin switches Alco switches and Road units would have been rebuilt and updated for reliability which would have been still cheaper than buying new locomotives which drove them into bankruptcy.
The Long Island Railroad had 8,000 car loads a year. They had very poor customer service. The New York and Atlantic took over Freight Service from the LIRR and it went from 8,000 carloads to 37,000 car loads because they gave their shippers good service. The bigger railroad could have done the same thing but their attitude was piss poor.
MTA is Metropolitan Transportation Authority, not Metropolitan Transit Association.
Bombardier never went bust, or became a crown corp
you forgot about the ALCO C630, M640, C855
What about the thousands of Alco built under licence in India
Please forgive me but correct usage of words is important. Tact is how one deals with others. Kevin has no tact, he is blunt and often rude. For example. I believe the word you were intending to use is tack. This is a nautical term referring to changing directions as in tacking into the wind.
Excellent work on your video.
Sorry for my late response. I'm actually using the "tact" short for tactics. It's actually British slang which I picked up form watching shows like top gear and Keeping up appearances. Its also short for tacking, a sailing method of going against the wind which, coincidentally is also what Alco was having to do at the time to compete with GM and GE at that time.
Thanks for watching!
@@alcobufff
Thank you for that bit of British slang. I haven’t had the opportunity to learn that.
Excellent work.
You mentioned SP 3100 isn’t really a U25B. That’s not really true. Is a GP38-2 still a GP38? Yes, but the -2 has upgraded electrical components. Still same thing though. Is a U25BE still a U25B? Yes, but it has electrical components from a U33C, essentially an upgrade.
Also, 3100 isn’t used as the main switcher at SCRM (formerly OERM). Usually SP 1006 or OERM 1956 are used as the switchers. If you would like to donate the cost of completely backdating 3100 to the original 20 notch throttle and other components, I’m sure the museum would happily accept it. Otherwise, don’t insult efforts to preserve history.
Quite frankly, I like 3100 the way it is. It’s earned the nickname “Cadillac” by museum volunteers.
I did not mean to insult anyone involved in the restoration of locomotive. Quite frankly, nor do I see what warrants that allegation. No were in this video did I make any comments about history being something that we don't need to preserve, nor did I insult anyone involved in the preservation of history. In fact, this video is focused on the preservation of history. Keeping the memory of these locomotives alive for a new generation to discover them. All I did was to point out, and being factual in doing so, that a few operation C425's still exist with their original specs while the closest one can get to an operating u25b is the one at SCRM, there are no originals in operation anyware, at least that I'm aware of. The words I used may have come off as harsh, but I was just trying to be clear that the unit is not an original u25b. Also, I did not know that the unit was no longer being used as a switcher, good to hear they got her back into mainline service again! Please note, that other alterations done to the unit are increase in HP and the swap of the control stand with an AAR type, these were done by the SP before it was taken delivery of by the museum. Is it right to call a retromodded 57" Chevy (great car) a fully original 57" Chevy? No. Are both car types beautiful works of art? Yes!
ALCOs continued to be built in India until the Millenium. Their smoke effects are, shall we say, prolific.....
The Australian ones were made by A.E. GOODWIN, not GOODWILL. And yes you did butcher the names of the towns. But back in the '70's and '80's, ALCo ruled in the heavy haul iron ore trains. BIG trains, even back then. Huge things now, powered by the usual suspects,EMD SD 70's, GE things.
You really need to get your facts together as you miss a lot of information in this video. Also your Geography is way off. Both CN and CP ran C424 units. Also Alco and MLW were the same company only difference was Country of origin.