For what it's worth, those Alco 855 units (A-B-A) where VERY unreliable and only made one aborted westbound trip out of Council Bluffs, Iowa, back in 1964. They never made it to Fremont, Nebraska, because upon making forward transition just west of Summit, all three units had their side high voltage electric cabinets explode into flames. Some local fire department had to put out the flames, and all three units where towed dead back to Omaha Shops. The Union Pacific NEVER let the units operate in a consist together again!
Even the Alco Field Service people couldn't keep them running.
They never made it to Fremont, Nebraska, because upon making forward transition just west of Summit, all three units had their side high voltage electric cabinets explode into flames
Didn't that have something to do with using aluminum wiring instead of copper as a weight and $$$ saving choice by ALCO? I know one of the big UP loco had this problem due to aluminum wiring about this time frame.
Butch
Very interesting background there. When I worked at UP Omaha circa 1980 the CMO spoke at an event and mentioned something about, when our friends at Alco built the double-engine units they dropped the engines on a frame and plumbed everything around them. Implying, I think, that they were very badly engineered and practically impossible to work on to do any major modifications or repairs, and had a short life. An experiment that failed in a big way.
