Nostalgia & History > NP28: Alco C630's

1. June 10, 1973
2.  April 1,1972
3. April 1,1972
Bailey Yard, all my pics unless noted

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The ALCO design department under Joe Ennis certainly produced some great "industrial-looking" pieces of heavy equipment for railroad service.  Too bad that the functionality of  their internal components didn't quite match up with their external appearances.

Greg Stadter
Phoenix, AZ

They sure look massive!

Nice looking, agreed.  But those vertical ladder steps were a killer ! It was like they designed the locomotive and then realized they forgot the steps and threw those little ladders on as an after thought,

I really have enjoyed these  NP  posts.  This one shows some real gems in power.  I'm glad one of these got saved and is in Pine Bluff AR, however, when I was there you could not enter the cab because the steps were not safe for most people to use--hopefully by now they have built another way to enter or view the cab interior.
Brian Stevens

E25 Wrote:
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> The ALCO design department under Joe Ennis
> certainly produced some great "industrial-looking"
> pieces of heavy equipment for railroad service. 
> Too bad that the functionality of  their internal
> components didn't quite match up with their
> external appearances.

First: THANKS for your NP posts!

While I love the ALCO lore:  If ALCO had better reliability and orders of significance (mostly more from western roads) would have materialized the company may have survived much longer. Along with the reliability issues the company was a financial football.  When solid backing and commitment is not in place it is very hard to continue the enthusiasm for R&D to improve products. ALCO also suffered apparently with some poor internal leadership in it's final years. EG: promotion of the V8-251 for the poorly thought out C-415 model.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/20 07:06 by bluesman.

Another great group, valmont. So neat to see these units, and looking generally good and cared-for in UP paint. Wonderful -- and thanks much.

Anybody else having trouble seeing these?  I just get "broken image" icons on two different computers.

Yup - same thing

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
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> Anybody else having trouble seeing these?  I just
> get "broken image" icons on two different
> computers.

"Too bad that the functionality of  their internal components didn't quite match up with their external appearances." 
Thats largely a lot of railfan "bunk"
Nothing wrong with the functionality of the internal components. More 251's are still in service today than the GE FDL engines. Marketing was an issue and the fact Alco was tiny and had little persusion compared to the purchasing and financing power of GM and GE.

Small rosters of Alco's on major railroads leads to improper maintence.

RWJ


E25 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The ALCO design department under Joe Ennis
> certainly produced some great "industrial-looking"
> pieces of heavy equipment for railroad service. 
> Too bad that the functionality of  their internal
> components didn't quite match up with their
> external appearances.

LV95032 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yup - same thing
>
> Evan_Werkema Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Anybody else having trouble seeing these?  I
> just
> > get "broken image" icons on two different
> > computers.

Same here. 404 not found.

LV95032 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Too bad that the functionality of  their
> internal components didn't quite match up with
> their external appearances." 
> Thats largely a lot of railfan "bunk"
> Nothing wrong with the functionality of the
> internal components. More 251's are still in
> service today than the GE FDL engines. Marketing
> was an issue and the fact Alco was tiny and had
> little persusion compared to the purchasing and
> financing power of GM and GE.


More 251's than FDL's???  Where do you get that number?  Just adding up the Dash-9's (both straigh and rebuilt) on NS alone totals more than 1100 FDL powered units.  Then there are CSX, BNSF, UP, CN,CP, etc.