Grassroots Railroad Sports?

One of the projects that SMS Rail is working on that I'm excited to see completed is an operational restoration of pair of Alco FA-2s. They are actually privately-owned but the owner is having the work performed at SMS's shops in Bridgeport. One of them, ex-LIRR #603/L&N #309 has run and moved around the yard a little and is now having the cosmetics addressed, while the other, ex-LIRR #601/L&N #317 has yet to really see any major work. Once completed, they'll be painted up in PRR livery and become the only pair of operating Alco FAs in the United States. There are some operational MLW FPA-4s, but of the surviving fifteen Alco FA-1s and FA-2s, all of which had been converted to Long Island Rail Road "power pack" cab cars and saved after their retirement, none of them are operational. In fact none of the others are even remotely close to to operational status, and the status of "preservation" on some of them is debatable.

As for why it's being painted in PRR colors when it's ex-L&N and ex-Long Island Rail Road? Well, the owner says "Because that's what I want to."

Until Long Island Rail Road began retiring the "power packs" in the 1980s, there actually were no Alco FAs in preservation. Ex-New Haven FA-1 #0401 (NH always put a 0 before three-digit unit numbers), which is LIRR #618 with the numberboards parallel to the body in the center, was the first Alco FA when to be preserved when it was purchased by the Railroad Museum of New England in 1986. It is also the oldest preserved Alco FA. At one point they had it cosmetically restored in NH orange and black and had it so that they could pair it up with their RS-3, NH #0529, and control the RS-3 from the cab of the #0401. These days, the #0401/#618 is tucked in the back lot, covered in rust and primer, with plywood affixed to the sides, and looks pretty sad. I know that the modification to a "Power Pack" involved so many changes to the mechanical side of things that the RMNE was doubtful that they could ever make it an operational locomotive again (especially since it's not like an EMD F-unit, where you could part out a relatively common GP7 or GP9 or even GP38-2 to make it whole again) but it could be used as a cab car for push-pull operations.

The LIRR "power pack" conversion ended up being a bit of a double-edged sword for preservationists. On one hand, if that project hadn't been undertaken, there likely would not be any surviving Alco FA-1s or Alco FA-2s. Consider that New Haven #0401, after being purchased from LIRR when it was retired in 1986, was the first Alco cab unit to be officially preserved. Not one single FA had been saved after retirement from Class I railroads, especially alarming when you consider that, while it didn't sell in EMD F7 numbers, it still sold 1,401 total units across FA-1, FA-2, FPA-2 and FPA-4 variants, including boosters. This wasn't like a Baldwin model that sold just 10 units when new and all of them were scrapped, this was a pretty sizable population that pretty much entirely vanished. A large part of that came down to timing: Sold between 1946 and 1956 with 15 year financing,. by the time they were paid off, the second-generation locomotives were rolling out. Carbody units were no longer popular, railroads were leery of Alco products, especially anything 244-powered, and they needed modern power. EMD was offering sizable discounts for trade-ins, even reusing the trucks and traction motors off of Alco products, and so many Alco FAs were marched off to La Grange, Illinois and then sent next door to Pielet Brothers for scrapping. The GM&O's GP30s and GP35s, the Soo Line's GP30s, and the Ann Arbor's GP35s all rolled on Alco FA trucks and GE 752 traction motors, and there were other railroads that did the same. When LIRR began buying up the FAs to convert to control cabs and HEP generators, the ones they were buying were the last ones surviving. The nineteen FAs came from Penn Central where poor financial health had led to the New York Central and New Haven hanging onto theirs, from Burlington Northern where they had been shuffled off to the Alco-dominated Spokane, Portland & Seattle, from Western Maryland where frugal management kept EMD F7s and BL-2s running into the late '70s, and from Louisville & Nashville, another economically-minded railroad. And surely if LIRR hadn't bought them then, they weren't long for the world. And when they were retired from LIRR, starting in 1985, preservation groups were in a position to grab them up.

The negative part of this program though is just how bastardized the locomotives ultimately were. Right off the bat, they had their control stands altered, they were completely rewired, and the traction motors were removed. The 244 V12 engines were derated, since they didn't need all 1500-1600hp for HEP generation, and the generators were set up to provide the unusual 600V HEP that LIRR preferred. Over the years, they were increasingly modified, with extra lights and MU and HEP receptacles grafted onto the bodies, and some of them having the 244 V12s replaced with sled-mounted Detroit Diesel generator engines. There was also just all the wear and tear of decades of operations and abuse, and a few were even used on the SEPTA gel trains which accelerated rust concerns. By the time LIRR began retiring them, the newest ones were 30+ years old, and a lot of the sat on the deadlines, exposed to weather and vandals, before they were ultimately sold. And when they were purchased, many of them were bought up by perenially cash-strapped organizations that found themselves with a locomotive that was very far from being a complete, operational locomotive and wasn't even in good enough shape to be a display piece.

The Western Maryland owned just four Alco FA-2s (No FA-1s/FB-1s or FB-2s) and ended up selling the entire fleet to Long Island Rail Road for conversion. Three of the four survived their career on the Long Island Rail Road, with one getting further modified by having it's cab cut off and replaced with a platform and a bunch of other modifications that never panned out and led to it being scrapped. Of the remaining three, one of them, WM #303, was purchased by the B&O Railroad Museum and received a full cosmetic restoration into the Western Maryland "fireball" black and yellow livery. In 2000, the B&O Railroad Museum ended up selling it off to a gentleman named Gerald Altizer, who had purchased 14 miles of the ex-Western Maryland trackage from CSX on which he was operating the Georges Creek Railway. Altizer was a big Western Maryland diehard and had already acquired several historical locomotives and painted them in Western Maryland colors, with the plan of using them either on the Georges Creek or leasing them out to the nearby Durbin & Greenbriar and West Virginia Central. In rather short order, the D&GV shops got the brakes, lights and generator working aboard WM #303, as well as reconfiguring the electrical system to put out the more common 480V HEP, and the unit was frequently used on both the D&GV and WVC in conjunction with their WM-painted F7A and F7B as a control cab. It couldn't power itself, but it looked terrific.

All the while, Altizer was putting together the parts to make WM #303 into an operational locomotive. He managed to get his hands on a good 12-244 Alco prime mover, and he scavenged several crates of electrical cabinet component from the two MRS-1s and two S-4s scrapped at Cass in October 2010. All he lacked was a set of four GE GT752 traction motors to make it complete. Unfortunately, the WM #303 first found itself the subject of a protracted legal battle between Altizer/Georges Creek Railway and the D&GV. The lease to the D&GV had long expired but the D&GV was refusing to return the locomotive, with John Smith, owner of D&GV, making the statement to many of his employees that "if it is on my railroad, there's not much anyone can do to force you to return it." Altizer eventually won the case and the WM #303 was returned to his property, but before long, the Georges Creek Railway's major customer, Versa Paper Mill in Luke, MD, closed up shop and without that revenue, the Georges Creek subsequently went dormant. Over the past couple years, Altizer has slowly sold of his collection of WM locomotives and this year WM #303, which had been rusting away at Barton, MD, came up on the auction block. Altizer said it was difficult to sell off the WM #303, having owned it 23 years and having so many parts to hopefully restore it to operating condition, but with the Georges Creek Railway closed seemingly for good, it made no sense to hold onto. It was purchased by Railway Service Contractors, who has a shop in Belton, Missouri and is being rebuilt with a HEP generator for a yet-unknown client to be used on an also yet-unknown tourist operation. Sadly it sounds like it will not be restored to an operational locomotive, but instead left as a control cab/generator car.

Particularly bizarre were the GM&O's FA-1s, which were the very first Alco FAs to roll off the factory floor. Alco hadn't quite settled on the styling details that would become a trademark, and so they had the headlight and headlight grille mounted below the curvature of the nose. This was despite the fact that the Alco PAs were already rolling off the assembly line with their headlights mounted flush with the top of the nose. And speaking of Alco PAs, the GM&O FA-1s also had the curved trim on the grille behind the cab that was used on the Alco PA-1s and PA-2s. 

The Alco FA-1 demonstrator set that eventually ended up on the GM&O. From this angle you can see the curved trim behind the cab, as well as skirting for the fuel tanks. Just having that headlight mounted lower like that completely changes the look of the locomotive.

One of the drawbacks to the Alco FA-1, compared to the EMD FT and F3, was that Alco did not offer a steam generator option to allow use in passenger service. When they introduced the FA-2 the only difference was that they lengthened the carbody by 2.4 feet. Most mistakenly believe that all 1500hp units were FA-1s and all 1600hp units were FA-2s, but there were actually 1600hp units built using the shorter FA-1 carbody. Lengthening the carbody allowed a steam generator to be fitted, if a customer requested, and a steam generator-equipped FA-2/FB-2 was referred to as an FPA-2/FPB-2. This was a different situation from the EMD F7/FP7 situation: a regular F7 could be ordered with a steam generator, an FP7 was a lengthened F7 to accommodate a larger water reservoir for the generator for longer distance trains. All FA-2s and FPA-2s had the same carbody, it's just the difference was whether it was equipped with a steam generator and underslung water tank or not. The FPA-2/FPB-2 was not a success though, only moving 73 A-units and 33 B-unit units in total, compared to EMD's 381 FP7As and 93 FP7Bs. 

In the US, the end of FA-2/FPA-2 production was the apparent end of Alco carbody freight unit production, while EMD continued to produce the F9 and FP9, both to less success than the preceding F7 and FP7. But Alco did install 1800hp 251 V12s in an FPA-2/FPB-2 set owned by Lehigh Valley and used them for R&D purposes. Similar to how Alco cataloged a 2400hp V16 251-powered Alco PA-4 that no one purchased, Alco and MLW did catalog an 1800hp V12 251-powered FA-4 that failed to generate any buyers, due to carbody units and Alco products both falling out of favor. But where the freight variant failed to generate any sales, bizarrely the passenger version, the FPA-4 did find buyers, but only north of the border. Canadian National, who had owned 8 FA-1s, 25 FA-2s, 15 FB-2s, 6 FPA-2s and 6 FPB-2s, ordered 34 FPA-4s and 12 FPB-4s. Canadian railroads had always preferred B-B passenger units over A1A-A1A passenger units (in fact, the only EMD E-units sold to a Canadian railroad were three E8s for CP to use on joint service in New England with the B&M) and Canadian railroads always had a fondness for Alco units, so the purchase made a certain sense.

Delivered in 1958, the FPA-4s were run in Canadian National, and then VIA Rail, passenger service for over 30 years. While the iffy reliability of the 244 engines had turned off many Alco customers, the 1800hp and 200hp V12 251 engines were noted to very reliable, which contributed to their long life. Retirement finally came in 1989, as a result of multiple factors. Due to their age, they were starting to get worn out. With MLW leaving the locomotive market in 1985 and then Bombardier's failure to launch after acquiring MLW, they were facing diminished manufacturer support. And, the FPA-4s were all still equipped with steam generators, and VIA Rail was buying more and more coaches that used electric heating and air conditioning, which the FPA-4s were not compatible with. The arrival of HEP generator-equipped EMD F40PHs began to phase out the FPA-4s. Fortunately, due to their long lives, when retirement did come, they were grabbed up by many organisations, particularly quite a few in the US, for use in tourist operations, meaning that if you see what looks like an Alco FA operating somewhere, it is guaranteed to be an MLW FPA-4.

CN FPA-4 #6773, just one year old, in the as-delivered green and yellow/gold passenger livery at Dundas, Ontario. In relatively short order, they would be repainted into the red, black and white modern CN livery.

CNR #6792 in Windsor, Ontario in 1961, with the Detroit skyline in the background. While the #6792 is still in the original green and yellow livery, you can see that the #6802 coupled to it is already in the red, white, and black livery. The #6802 is an interesting unit as well, being a Canadian Locomotive Company (Fairbanks-Morse's Canadian subsidiary) CPB-16-5. The 1600hp passenger C-Liners were unique to Canada, with US railroads preferring the 2000hp and 2400hp passenger variants, and it's one of just 8 built.

A combination of an FPA-4, a GMD (EMD's Canadian subsidiary) F9B, and a GMD passenger GP9 roll out of the east end of Turcot Yard at the Decourcelle Street crossing in the St. Henri District of Quebec. They're headed to Toronto with a pretty healthy length train, appears to be at least 13 cars, and the track curves back the other way so there could be more. CN had no qualms about mashing up locomotives of different manufacturers and models, since I've seen photos of a CLC C-Liners, with an EMD B-unit, and an FPA-4. Some railroads preferred to keep locomotives of like brands together, and in the early diesel era, PRR was adamant about dispatchers keeping homogenous blocks of the same model locomotives on trains.

An FPA-4/FPB-4 set whisks a passenger train around a curve as they approach Bayview Junction. The #6777 on the lead was saved by George Hockaday, a former chief mechanical engineer at the D&H, for use on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad and is still running there today. Also, Alco PA-4u D&H#18, now NKP #190, was named the G.W. Hockaday while on the D&H, in honor of his mechanical expertise.

CN FPA-4 #6786 with the Champlain at St. Hubert, Quebec in '65. No, it's not towing the train backwards, there is in actually a round-end observation car at both ends of the train. And that's because this is the 5-car stainless-steel consist that Budd built in 1937 for the Reading Company to use on their Philadelphia-Jersey City Crusader behind a streamlined 4-6-2. The idea behind the round-end observation cars at both ends was that the Reading didn't need to wye the entire train, they could just unhook the locomotive, spin it on a turntable and then pull it back the other direction. In '62, as the Reading's fortunes declined, they decided to sell off the stainless-steel lightweight equipment and convert the Crusader to just regular smoothside passenger cars. By 1967, the Crusader was reduced to a couple of RDCs. Meanwhile, north of the border, the cars ran as a pretty much unbroken set until the 1980s. At that point, VIA Rail scrapped the three middle cars, while one observation car ended up at the Railroad Museum of PA and the other was used on a dinner train in Washington state.

A lash-up that likely caused a conniption for some poor railfan. First, you have the odd A-A-B-B lashup of an FPA-4 and an F9A running elephant-style, and then two F9Bs. And then the last F9A is backwards, causing the stripes to angle backwards of the rest. I'm sure someone was going "Why couldn't they have spun that FPA-4 and hooked it up A-B-B-A?" 

VIA Rail FPA-4 #6786, an FPB-4, and a Canadian National RS-18 lead the Ocean Limited through the Matapedia River Valley in Quebec.

VIA Rail RDCs and FPA-4s are serviced at the old Canadian National Spadina roundhouse in Toronto in 1985. Within a year, the 1920s-era facilities will be leveled. And just a few years after, the FPA-4s will all be gone. Some of the RDCs are still holding strong on VIA Rail though.

An A-B-A set of FPA-4s race through St-Bruno-de-Montarville on a brisk January day in 1987. By 1987, solid A-B-A sets of FPAs were getting pretty scarce.

An A-B-B set of FPA-4s pass by Fairview Junction on their way from Fairfax to Montreal.

Canadian National 4-8-4 #6218 waits on a passing siding with an excursion, while a CN passenger train races by behind FPA-4s. At the time, the 4-8-4 was a marvel, while the FPA-4s were ho-hum everyday stuff. Nowadays, both are sought-after classics. 

A CN freight, with a big MLW M636, is in the hole while a VIA Rail FPA-4 comes smoking by at Leonard, Quebec.

VIA #6773 leans into the curve at Leonard, Quebec with a 3-car train. Taken in April of 1988, the #6773 was 30 years young and time was running out for the FPA-4s in general revenue service.

Looking a bit scruffy, and with the nose door popped open to get some airflow through the cab, VIA #6779 and an FPB-4 bracket a fairly new F40PH. According to the photographer, he heard crews griping about old cabs leading the new F40PHs on several occasions. 

A long string of retired FPAs sits at the shops in Quebec. Quite a few of the FPA-4s found second life though. A big part of it was because at the time, classic EMD E- and F-units were pretty much all spoken for, and those that weren't were in rough shape, and the FPA-4 retirements generated a sudden influx of classic cab units. The fact that there were no preserved PAs or FAs meant they were also unique and preservationists jumped at the chance to reconcile that.

One of the first places that the retired VIA FPA-4s was on a stretch of ex-Southern Pacific trackage between St. Helena and Napa, CA. In a gorgeous dark red and light gold paint scheme, and paired up with former Ski Train passenger cars, they formed the Napa Valley Wine Train.

In reply to NickD :

How long do those stay in service?   Not just one company but their life?  

In reply to NickD :

If the designers had thought to angle the stripes on one side in the opposite direction on all their units, they'd never have had this problem. 

In reply to frenchyd :

A very difficult to answer question, dependent on a lot of factors.

Fairbanks-Morse, Baldwin, and Lima-Hamilton products were often done after less than two decades. A large part of that was that their oddball nature meant that railroads just didn't want to put up with them. Also, major manufacturer support went away after their manufacturers left the locomotive markets fairly early on (F-M stopped building locomotives for the US in 1958 and it's last locomotive was in '63, Baldwin was pulled out of the market by parent company Westinghouse in '56, and Lima-Hamilton was swallowed up by Baldwin in a merger in '51). But some of them were repowered with more common power plants or soldiered on on short lines or insular industrial lines for decades. The Tennessee Valley Authority was operating their Fairbanks-Morse H-16-66 until into the 1990s.

Alco/MLW products held on for a while in Class I service. Alco built locomotives until 1969, their Canadian subsidiary MLW built locomotives until 1985, and Fairbanks-Morse actually ended up with the rights to the Alco 251 engine and continues to supply some parts. There were quite a few RS-3s hanging around on Class Is until the 1970s, some 20-25 years after they rolled out of the factory, and the D&H had RS-36s, built in 1962, still in service after Canadian Pacific bought the D&H in '91 and CNW had 1965-built C628s running in heavy ore drag service until 1990. While there aren't any Alcos left on Class Is anymore, there are plenty of them still active elsewhere; Batten Kill Railroad still has a pair of RS-3s running, now 70+ years old, and will soon have an even-older RS-1 running, while Delaware-Lackawanna in Pennsylvania is an all-Alco show and has everything from 1950s RS-3s up to 1980s MLW M636s in regular service.

GEs historically tended to be rather short-lived. GE offered attractive 15 year financing, but their main engine was a little harder to work on, their products didn't hold up very well (as one engineer put it "What Alco made from steel and brass, GE made from aluminum and tin"), and GE refused to license service parts for aftermarket manufacturing, which made parts for them very expensive. GE also tends not to support models, as a way of forcing railroads to continue to buy the latest and greatest. Typically, when the 15 year financing ran out on GEs, they were sent back because they were absolutely worn out, and replaced with new GEs. The Universal-series locomotives that they got into the market with in the '50s are almost entirely extinct and there certainly are none active on Class Is (last I heard, Lake Superior & Ishpeming still had a few and Pickens Railroad has a bunch of the odd "Baby Boat" U18Bs running) and the later mid-'70s Dash-7s series are also borderline extinct and there are none on Class Is. The Dash-8s, introduced in the late-1980s are still holding on here and there, but even those are dwindling, or they are being heavily rebuilt. The Dash-9s, introduced in 1993 are still fairly common though, and those are headed for 30 years old. The big issue that the Dash-8s and Dash-9s face are the microprocessor controls are pretty complicated and now obsolete, making them harder to keep running and resulting in most shortlines not being too interested in them. The Genesis passenger units, the face of Amtrak since the 1990s, are also starting to be phased out, and a large part of it is that GE no longer supports them with parts.

EMD, as befitting what was once a division of General Motors, is the king of long lives. Amtrak still has a 1941-built SW1 switcher in regular service, EMD FL9s from 1958 were running into the mid-2000s on Long Island Rail Road and Metro North commuter trains, Canadian National up until recently still had some twenty-plus ex-Illinois Central GP9s (dating back to 1954-1963) in service, albeit heavily rebuilt, and BNSF had, again heavily rebuilt, 1950s and 1960s EMD GP30s and GP35s, running up until about ten or so years ago. The EMD -38/-39/-40 series locomotives, which were kind of the Tri-Five Chevy of locomotives, can still be found everywhere, Class Is, regionals, shortlines, leasing companies, you name it. EMD was the king of standardization and provided tons of support for older models. Their 567 engine (named because it was 567 cubic inches per cylinder) is more or less still in production, since the 645 series engine was an overbored 567, and the current 710 engine is a stroked 645. There's a lot of building block mentality there, with the ability to take a 567 block, install 645 liners and pistons and heads, and have a more modern and powerful engine. There are tons of old EMDs out there that are on their third or fourth major rebuild, with new cabs, engines rebuilt with turbos and 645 power packs, and upgraded to modern EMD Dash-2 electrical systems. Kind of a Ship of Theseus situation. EMD for a while was also the gold standard of passenger power, with their FP7s/FP9s and E7s/E8s/E9s running into the '70s, and Amtrak actually wanted them to build an "E10" but EMD had destroyed the E-series body tooling in the '60s due to the decline in passenger locomotive orders. They fumbled things with the SDP40F-2, but won it back with the F40PH in 1976, which while Amtrak has retired them all, they are still running elsewhere in North America, including on VIA Rail, although they are starting to be phased out.