ALCO Century 430, why were so few made?


Bruette

Well-Known Member
I have been learning from one of our esteemed forum members about the ALCO 430 and it seems to me it was ahead of its time. Rather then to take over another poster's thread I decided to start this one to learn some more.
 
The C430 was the final nail in ALCo's coffin. It was introduced to go head to head against EMD's GP40 and GE's U30B. When long-time loyal customers turned their noses up at it, ALCo announced they were exiting the business. Not many railroads were willing to but a brand new relatively unproven locomotive with very limited support and no future, so not many got built or sold.
 
Did the ALCO 430 or 630 have any major flaws or what it just a case of good salesmanship on the part of EMD and GE?

How long would it be before another locomotive would utilize AC power?
 
Forgive me Terry. I just found the answer to the second part of my question in the previous thread.
 
For the convenience of those who have not been following along in the previous thread I have copied and pasted the earlier conversation that pertains to my question.



Louis
That has me thinking, Terry can you tell me if they do scheduled in frame rebuilds in locomotives when there is no machine work necessary like they do in trucks or do they pull the engines out for all internal engine work?

Terry
They can do in-frames, depending on what needs to be done. I've replaced power assemblies in EMD engines, and cylinder heads/pistons/liners in alcos. Rebuilding GE engines should mean removal, since operation long-term generates internal stresses that can only be relieved with the entire block out of the engine. I don't know if 251 alcos had the same issue, as my experience is limited to 539 and 244 models.
Another bit of useless trivia:
Alco used the month and year of first fire-up for their engine models. The 531 was first fired and tested in May of 1931. The 251 was first completed in February of 1951.
Imagine if they had remained in business until today, it is conceivable we could have alco 3006 engines, from March of 2006, for tier 3 emmissions .

Louis
Thank you Terry!!!
Great information as always, for the record I enjoy useless trivia about trains especially about ALCO one of my favorites!
My first model train was an ALCO Century 430 and I believe they were upgraded versions of the Century 425, but did the 430 use a higher output 251 to achieve 3000HP or was it a different engine all together?
Thank you very much for always helping me with these seemingly useless questions, but they are important in my world.

Terry
The C430 was powered by a 251E. The C425 was powered by a 251C. The 430 and 630 were the first locomotives to use AC power generation, using alternators to power the traction motors.

Willis
AC traction motors eh!, well useless trivia or not it sure is interesting. One the claims around here was they were much better at pulling a train up the grades than the GM locos, the claim was "once an ALCO or MLW engine hooked onto a consist it would pull and pull" something like that :D

Terry
AC power generation, as in an alternator rather than a generator. This was something not followed up on until the GP38AC. The traction motors were still DC.
 
From what I learned sometime in the past when I got interested in the CB&CNS was that Alco failed because of the motors they were using and they lost the market to GM and GE. However they licensed Montreal Locomotive Works to build the MLW 630's and then the MLW 636 which were in fact Alcos. MLW being a Canadian company and located in Quebec APPEARS to have an edge while dealing with the CNR and CPR (Govt. Corporations at the time) so those companies were the major purchasers. MLW also built RS models also under license from Alco. In the early 1990's CN divested itself of "marginally profitable sections and Tex Rail purchased a few, one of which the named CB&CNS RWY. along with the railway purchase they bought a fleet of MLW's, 630's, one 636 and some RS models. These locos had their best days past and were all scrapped and cut up for scrap except 2 630's which are somewhere in the USA (probably also scrapped by now) One maybe interesting fact was the 636 never hauled a load because of engine failures. First time out the prime mover blew up, and a motor from a parts 630 was installed. It blew up also and the unit became a spare parts unit.
I have photos of all this however it's all on another computer that failed and the technology and connectors on this one are a lot different. :(
Cheers
Willis
 
Did the ALCO 430 or 630 have any major flaws or what it just a case of good salesmanship on the part of EMD and GE?
I don't know if it is good salesmanship or good corporate strategy, but in earlier days Alco was partnered with GE. When GE decided to go into their own loco business that partnership was broken. I can guess the difference in cost for GE partner priced components vs GE full retail components was significant. This was(is?) GEs modus operandi for their business from the beginning when JPM kicked Edison out and took over.

How long would it be before another locomotive would utilize AC power?
Assuming one doesn't count Tesla's AC locomotive from the 1930s.... AC as traction motors wasn't until the 1990s. I don't know which was first but as I recall there was an SD70AC, the SD90AC, and a -9WAC. Seems like those were all around the same time period.
 
There were three SD60MAC engines built for long term testing. While they were painted Cascade Green, EMD owned them.
I remember a test bed passenger engine or two also had AC traction motors about the same time.
 
Alco’s demise was not for a particular technical reason, the oft-repeated ‘they pulled better’, “they had AC” are just as pointless in the real world as Sony’s superior BetaMax video tape format was in the day. Packard made a better car, where are they now? The reasons were business, pure and simple. EMD/GM and GE simply had better business-related advantages: they could and did offer better financing, leasing and had more availability due to higher production capacity. Owning a leasing/capital company helps.This didn’t happen overnight. Gradually EMD and GE could outbid Alco simply because their production volume was so much higher and that drove their costs lower. Railroads were discovering the benefits of standardization, and just as they had recently discovered standardization on diesel over steam, standardization on power providers made a lot of economic sense. If I buy 100 from GE and 100 from EMD, I can save some serious coin by buying all 200 from GM or EMD. The maintenance was being taken over by the suppliers so the more GE or EMD or Alco you had, the more attention you got at service time. Suppliers could maintain your equipment on your site if you had enough to keep them busy. They could keep spare parts nearby if you had enough to warrant the costs of inventory. If you had 25 engines from 4 suppliers, you would be lucky to get the phone answered. But the guy who has 100 from a single supplier gets a lot better response.

Employee training is simpler. Your graphics department only needs a single paint scheme… and so on.
 
I'll add a couple here:
Alco was late getting into the diesel age, and their prime mover was more troublesome than EMD's 567.
 
Gradually EMD and GE could outbid Alco simply because their production volume was so much higher and that drove their costs lower. Railroads were discovering the benefits of standardization, and just as they had recently discovered standardization on diesel over steam, standardization on power providers made a lot of economic sense... Suppliers could maintain your equipment on your site if you had enough to keep them busy. They could keep spare parts nearby if you had enough to warrant the costs of inventory. If you had 25 engines from 4 suppliers, you would be lucky to get the phone answered. But the guy who has 100 from a single supplier gets a lot better response.
Very true. And the railroads almost followed this road to their own final disadvantage. Many railroads were headed down the EMD only path (like the D&RGW), but a few of the larger ones realized if there was only 1 loco supplier suddenly there would be a monopoly market. So they started making purchases to GE just so there would be competition in the market (the NPs purchase of U28C and U30Cs are an example). NP was later given some sort of business savvy award for leading this practice.
 
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I remember reading alco was doomed the day GE started building the second best locomotive.
Back in the early diesel days, alco thought diesels were, well, not a fad, but had a much smaller place in railroading than they ended up having. So, while promoting their diesel switch engines, they continued developing and marketing big steam for mainline use. This effectively cut their diesel development budget in half, leaving them playing catch up when it finally downed on them steam was going away, not to return.
The 244 not being properly tested before going on the market led to a lot of problems that could have been avoided, and tarnished their reputation.
 
I'll add a couple here:
Alco was late getting into the diesel age, and their prime mover was more troublesome than EMD's 567.


Also I heard a lot of customers were burnt out from the Alco FA-1 and it's unreliability. And with GE out on its own they had other options to choose from besides Alco
 
I do beg to differ on one point-Alco was out of the steam business after delivery of an order of P&LE Berkshires in 1948. I think that made them the first of the big three steam builders to exit the steam loco market. I believe Albert Churella wrote a book about this.

Photoman475
 



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