Grassroots Railroad Sports?

02Pilot said:

They already have at least one P32 engine painted in the NH black and orange, and have for years - I've seen it countless times on the Hudson Line. There's also one of the BL20s in the same scheme.

Yep, doing some looking, appears that #230 is in NH McGinnis livery. Maybe they'll do one of the dozen other New Haven liveries, like the dark green with gold pinstriping or the orange with white pinstriping and dark green roof.

Or maybe they'll do Penn Central instead, since they already have NYC and NH and Conrail and PC is the step in between. But I'm not sure anyone wants to remember Penn Central, and I'd argue the PC livery has some serious safety issues as well. I mean, it's literally all-black with just a white logo on the nose and sides.

A rare photo of New Haven Alco DL-109 #0759 in the McGinnis-era black, orange, and white. The #0759 (yes, New Haven included a 0 ahead of 3-digit locomotive numbers) was the last DL-109 delivered to the New Haven and was the only one of the 60 units, the largest roster of DL-109s in the US, to be repainted into McGinnis colors. By the time Patrick G McGinnis took over the New Haven in '54, the DL-109s were running out their last days and they were fully retired by '56, ironically about the same time that McGinnis was ousted from the New Haven. It is funny to see the older DL-109 in new McGinnis paint while the newer Alco PA-1 it's paired with is in the old green and gold.

The #0759 at Readville, Massachusetts with another DL-109 in the conventional dark green and gold.

A trio of DL-109s in the much more common dark green and yellow. The middle unit, #0743, appears to have paint wearing through, maybe from repeated washing, which shows that they were painted entirely yellow, then reverse-masked and had the dark green applied over it.

The #0700, showing the same sort of rub-through on the sides of the nose.

An incredibly rare photo of #0758 in a rare black with light gray pinstriping. I've only ever seen one other photo of this livery, and that's in Don Ball Jr.'s America's Colorful Railroads, and in that book he said that most New Haven afficionados weren't even aware that this scheme existed.

New Haven #0722 in the livery that was introduced on the Alco FA-1s, featuring a dark green roof, with an orange lower 2/3rds with white pinstriping. Some of the DL-109s were also repainted into this updated livery

There was also the unique #0722, painted in this white and red livery for the Boston to Hyannis Cranberry in 1949 and then re-painted back into the standard green & gold paint scheme in December of '53..

A pair of DL-109s at Poughquag, NY in 1947 hauling refrigerated boxcars. Although the A1A trucks and twin 1000hp prime movers made them essentially an E6/E7 and marked them as a passenger diesel, Alco claimed that the DL stood for Dual Locomotive, implying that it could be used in freight and passenger service. This allowed to Alco to be able to keep selling them during WWII, and New Haven grabbed up 60 of them, pressing them into freight service whenever they weren't hauling passenger trains. Records indicate that the DL-109s were on the road twenty to twenty-two hours a day and racked up mileage figures that were far in excess of what you would expect from the relatively short New Haven.

A pair of DL-109s got a wheel on with a passenger train at Westbrook, Connecticut in May of 1955

Railroad Museum of New England has been giving unique insight into the repair process on an Alco 244 V12 in an RS-3. RMNE owns an ex-New Haven RS-3, the #529, that had been picked up by Amtrak from New Haven to use in MoW work. Unlike a lot of Amtrak RS-3s, which were turned into "Dewitt Geeps" with 1200hp EMD 567 V12s, the #529 retained it's 244 engine. When Amtrak began purging a lot of the old oddball stuff, RMNE purchased the #529 and moved it to their property and restored it to it's New Haven appearance and it ran there from about 1996 until around 2008. It's been a display piece since then, but there had always been hope to restore the #529, since RMNE operates on former New Haven rails. They scored traction motors and wheels from a retired Providence & Worchester B23-7 with a blown prime mover (the #529's wheels had some pretty heavy wear, and the traction motors were original). But the 244 V12 had four cylinders that were just flat worn-out. Two were determined to be in need of both liners and pistons rings, while two others were determined to have excellent liners but needed new piston rings. Over the past few years, they raised funds from a local fund raiser and received the John H. Emery Rail Heritage Trust grant towards necessary parts and materials needed to perform a significant amount of work to the engine.

Everything stripped off the cylinders to begin removal. This is the R1 cylinder (right bank, front cylinder) which was found to have a worn out cylinder head and liner in a previous inspection. Those dogs that overlap the cylinder heads are referred to as "head crabs" (No, not the things from Half-Life) and hold the head down on the liner. They're also torqued to insanely high amounts, as in 1200lb-ft, and require a special fixture and torque multiplier to loosen and tighten them. RMNE was fortunate to acquire these tools from Amtrak when Amtrak purged all their 244-powered equipment from the fleet.

The head craps are removed, and the head is ready to lift off.

A special fixture is installed to allow the head to be lifted off.

And the head is off.

The rod bolts are loosened so that the "power pack" (rod, piston, water jacket and sleeve) can be lifted out.

And out comes the power pack.

Check out the size of the connecting rod bearing. Also, note that this bearing was installed December, 27th 1966. Doesn't look too bad considering the age

The piston is set aside for cleaning and installation of new rings.

Using a hydraulic press, they knocked the water jacket off the cylinder liner.

Having removed the water jacket, they found that the liner had pretty severe erosion on it. The chrome surface on the inside was completely worn out anyways, so the liner was junk, but this erosion is wild. This was likely caused by lack of water treatment during it's career with Amtrak

New liner with new O-rings

And the water jacket installed.

And then the piston and rod are craned up and ready to go in the new liner.

And the whole power pack is dropped back into the block.

The rebuilt cylinder head is then lowered on and ready to have the head crabs installed.

Torquing down the head crab. Torque spec is 1200ft-lbs, you 're not torquing that with a 1/2"-drive ratchet.

Great engine pics!

Next up was the R2 power pack. The R2 cylinder head was going to be cleaned and rebuilt, and this was one of the cylinders that they planned to just put cylinder rings in, since a borescope had shown that the R2 liner had perfect chrome surfacing inside.

After getting the R2 power pack out and separating the water jacket off it, they discovered that the liner had even worse erosion than the R1 power pack. This meant that they're plan of replacing 4 sets of rings and two liners flew out the window. And also, L5, which was similarly determined to not need a liner due to having excellent chroming on the bore, is also in question since they suspect it will have similar erosion once removed.

A look at the crank journal, which was found to be in excellent shape. Also, note the two rod nuts per side.

Putting the piston, with new rings, into the new liner. They discovered that a GE FDL-16 ring compressor also works with an Alco 244 piston.