J. R. Ewing!
Seriously, nothing to do with the DALLAS TV show!
But the TRAINS LOCOMOTIVE for this year is big on ALCO. 50 years ago the plant in NY state closedm
So, who or what shot ALCO? Some roads seems to like them. Others not so much. Wete they that BAD?
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Dominic Mazoch posted:J. R. Ewing!
Seriously, nothing to do with the DALLAS TV show!
But the TRAINS LOCOMOTIVE for this year is big on ALCO. 50 years ago the plant in NY state closedm
So, who or what shot ALCO? Some roads seems to like them. Others not so much. Wete they that BAD?
I'll tell you EXACTLY "who shot ALCO"! That would be GE, since GE provided the electrical control system to ALCO, when GE entered the domestic diesel locomotive business, with the U25B, GE would no longer provide the absolute latest electrical components to their competition, i.e. ALCO. Even though ALCO had a better engine (the 251) than GE, in the early days, ALCO could no longer compete.
They shot themselves in the foot. GM had a virtual monopoly on diesel engines during the War. Alco rushed the 244 and it wasn't quite ready for prime time. The 251 came along a few years later as an improved model, but EMD had a better reputation, and gained a lead that it would never relinquish. That being said, I love the 'chug chug' Alco sound!!
ALCo suffered from several challenges by the time they were forced to close US operations and transfer all designs to MLW in Canada. Hard to pick just one, but the following certainly contributed:
My two cents. The market speaks on this one. A lot of credit has to go to ALCo though for being the most successful of the "legacy" steam manufacturers.
This one is easy: themselves. There is at least one treatise describing how Alco's corporate culture doomed them in the age of "mass produced" identical diesel-electric locomotives mass marketed to railroad Financial departments (EMD). Alco relied on contacts with railroad mechanical departments to secure orders, (a practice traditional in the days of Steam) while EMD drove costs down by building only their own standardized designs thus offering railroad Financial departments 5yr amortization. Alco was doomed.
Another major reason Alco failed was the government controls during WWII. EMD was assigned/allowed to build road diesels and sold a bunch of FT models and continued with design of the F3. ALCO was restricted to building only switchers for the duration. When the conflict ended EMD had a huge head start on road power both by development advancements and by having a large custormer base. Alco tried to catch up but as mentioned above had a few misteps that just worsened their lag.
Alco still powers the frequent service on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. Ex CN, VIA, and CP power still handles the 200,000 or so passengers a year that ride the CVSR. Alco may have gone out of business, but they live on!
Putting AL piston heads on the C630 order for SP really did not help relationship wirh that road.
L&N had a lot of early ALCO locomotives. Did they just like them, ALCO gave them a good deal.....
N&W did buy RS11's. Heard the reason why was they could not get enough GP9's during the convetsion of steam to diesel.
This goes back to development controls. Pennsy bought ALCOS and everything else becasue they could not get enough EMDs. At that point, EMD locos had proven to be more reliable than the others. How much more is probably some opinion, some facts. Also, I think EMD sold a whole package maintenance parts and instructions and even service reps that was probably a better support than the others. So ALCO, Baldwin, and FM were generally second choice. Although a few roads may have had other preferences.
prrjim posted:Another major reason Alco failed was the government controls during WWII. EMD was assigned/allowed to build road diesels and sold a bunch of FT models and continued with design of the F3. ALCO was restricted to building only switchers for the duration. When the conflict ended EMD had a huge head start on road power both by development advancements and by having a large custormer base. Alco tried to catch up but as mentioned above had a few misteps that just worsened their lag.
Alco also didn't have a viable competitor to the FT during or before the war. Don't forget, the FT was introduced in 1939.
There were also railroads that wanted to buy FT's (or diesels in general) but had to buy steam locomotives instead because of the WPB restrictions.
Rusty
prrjim posted:Another major reason Alco failed was the government controls during WWII.
Not really. The WPB (War Production Board) allowed Baldwin and ALCO to manufacture a LOT os steam locomotives through 1945.
EMD was assigned/allowed to build road diesels and sold a bunch of FT models and continued with design of the F3.
Except,,,,,,,,,the WPB limited EMD to ONLY ten (10) FT units PER DAY, account the Engine Manufacturing Line was making almost twenty (20) Diesel engines PER DAY for the Navy.
ALCO was restricted to building only switchers for the duration.
Not quite. They also built lots of steam locomotives.
When the conflict ended EMD had a huge head start on road power both by development advancements and by having a large custormer base. Alco tried to catch up but as mentioned above had a few misteps that just worsened their lag.
GG1 4877 posted:ALCo suffered from several challenges by the time they were forced to close US operations and transfer all designs to MLW in Canada. Hard to pick just one, but the following certainly contributed:
- Poor performance on the original 241 & subsequent 244 prime movers gave the company a poor reputation for reliability. While the 251 solved most of those issues, the damage had been done and sales numbers reflected that.
- GE dissolving their partnership with ALCo in 1953 and becoming a direct competitor.
- EMD being the number one manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives until well after ALCo was out of the business. They were just much more reliable and consistent and EMD got the advantage of being able to produce diesel-electrics during WWII. Cannot understate the competitive advantage that gave EMD.
- To a lesser extent the US railroads that stayed loyal to ALCo were mostly NE roads in poor condition such the PRR and NYC.
My two cents. The market speaks on this one. A lot of credit has to go to ALCo though for being the most successful of the "legacy" steam manufacturers.
And What About ALCo's foolish use of Aluminum Wiring as compared to the robust copper wiring.
VistaDomeScott posted:Alco still powers the frequent service on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. Ex CN, VIA, and CP power still handles the 200,000 or so passengers a year that ride the CVSR. Alco may have gone out of business, but they live on!
But the MLW ALCo FPA4's don't run much anymore on the Grand Canyon Railway.
prrhorseshoecurve posted:GG1 4877 posted:ALCo suffered from several challenges by the time they were forced to close US operations and transfer all designs to MLW in Canada. Hard to pick just one, but the following certainly contributed:
- Poor performance on the original 241 & subsequent 244 prime movers gave the company a poor reputation for reliability. While the 251 solved most of those issues, the damage had been done and sales numbers reflected that.
- GE dissolving their partnership with ALCo in 1953 and becoming a direct competitor.
- EMD being the number one manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives until well after ALCo was out of the business. They were just much more reliable and consistent and EMD got the advantage of being able to produce diesel-electrics during WWII. Cannot understate the competitive advantage that gave EMD.
- To a lesser extent the US railroads that stayed loyal to ALCo were mostly NE roads in poor condition such the PRR and NYC.
My two cents. The market speaks on this one. A lot of credit has to go to ALCo though for being the most successful of the "legacy" steam manufacturers.
And What About ALCo's foolish use of Aluminum Wiring as compared to the robust copper wiring.
I seem to recall that GE also used aluminum cabeling in their early (U25B?) units. So, since GE provided the electrical equipment to ALCO, they both had the same early on.
Ran Alco's primarily the last 11 years of my RR career. They earned deep respect from me. They are literally built like proverbial brick s**t house. Except for screw-on knobs EVERYTHING in the cabs were heavy steel plating, cast metal. or brass. My last day (April 20, 2018) I stepped out of an Alco that had been in CONTINUOUS SERVICE since 1963. Here's a picture of my last ride on the last day, taken as I was walking to the office for the last time:
No amount of nay-saying Alco's will change my mind. I've had them pull their guts out in obedience to my whip-snapping to make them get too much tonnage over a grade. I've seen them abused (asked to do too much) SO many times and they came back for more, seldom throwing in the towel. AND if they DID develop a problem, I could often fix it with a set of pliers and some wire (or duct tape, seriously) and get us going again. (Or even the butt end of a flag stick!)
Alco: Good engines. Bad management decisions. Betrayed by GE.
Andre
Amen Andre! The ALCO's were tough! And, they beat a GE any day!!!
A lot of this is myth. At the time that I started with GE in 1964, Alco's share of the loco market was six percent. GE's was 4 percent! When I made an idle comment to my boss that we could stay in business if we could get to 25% market share by targeting Alco, he looked at me with a great deal of annoyance. He told me that our target was EMD, which had 90% of the market. He said specifically "why in h*** would we even bother to target Alco with their "peanuts" for market share?" By 1964, Alco was "dead meat" with a market share that was insignificant, and survived for four more years by licensing their diesel engine to India, Australia, and Canada.
When I had the responsibility for several railroad accounts, each and every one was scrapping locos from all minority builders, and some stored Alcos only to cover traffic peaks until they could buy new power.
Alco diesels had some good design features and the GE main generator and traction motors were well regarded. The real problem was the Alco engine, both the 244 and the 251. (GE has to share some of the blame for the locomotive's control system, which used an amplydine excitation system that no railroad mechanic ever learned to properly adjust. And the GE air cooled turbo was a big problem until we convinced Alco that a water cooled turbo was required to meet the application.)
I remember one stressful meeting with the Wabash Railroad, when the Alco man in attendance told the Wabash mechanical guy that the reason for the poor performance of the railroad's Alcos was that the oil and filters were not changed often enough. The Wabash mechanical guy motioned for ALL of us to follow him outside, and he proceeded to a gondola car and asked the Alco guy to climb the ladder and tell everyone what he saw. The car was filled with Alco oil filters.....
A NYC mechanical guy told me that Alco PA's must always be paired with an EMD E7 or E8, and they must NEVER be out "alone". The railroad made every attempt to keep them between Harmon and Albany, since there was "help" at both ends should they encounter trouble.
It was before my work career, but right after the war Alco had a series of crippling strikes in Schenectady, and those work stoppages did not allow Alco to fully capitalize on the large demand for diesels. Alco was also slow to fully embrace dieselization, understandable in view of the general excellence of their steam designs.
GE ended its partnership with Alco before I started my career. I had heard that with a four percent market share, there were no scale/volume economies that Alco was providing that warranted a discount. Most of the major railroads bought more stuff than Alco did.
GE didn't bury Alco, they buried themselves.
The best engines that Alco ever made had wheel arrangements, like 4-6-4, 4-8-4, 4-6-6-4, 4-8-8-4, etc.
Hudson5432 posted:GE didn't bury Alco, they buried themselves.
The best engines that Alco ever made had wheel arrangements, like 4-6-4, 4-8-4, 4-6-6-4, 4-8-8-4, etc.
Words to live by!!!!!
all faults considered, still love 'em.......
The Not So Great Eastern runs nothing but ALCO Diesels (RS2,RS3, FA, PA, & PB) when not running GG1s. Having grown up and living again only 35 miles from ALCO many of the above reasons are true to some extent. What i have been told by those who worked there is: WWII allocations prevented sufficient development of the diesel engines Which gave EMD both a head start in development but also made many RR's comfortable servicing EMD's products, and, most importantly ALCO's sales force (steam men) still focused on selling railroad's mechanical departments while EMD's sales force focused on selling the railroad's accounting departments on the financial advantages of diesels over steam. Of course, the bean counters won.
White Motor Corporation (maker of White Trucks and Farm Equipment) bought Alco's marine engine business in 1970. Perhaps some Alcos are still working out on the waters?
laming posted:
Alco: Good engines. Bad management decisions. Betrayed by GE.
Andre
And that is the best summary of Alco I have ever read.
Somewhere along the line I read a case study about AlCO, and a lot of their problems were bad management. ALCO was a premiere steam engine builder and like many companies in the catbird seat in one technology, they failed to grasp fully the revolution that was coming with diesels (the guy writing the case study made a comment I remember, that GM had an advantage in that they didn't build steam locomotives, so they weren't burdened with the idea that the road ahead was keeping the status quo going; compare that to what GM did in the car business when they were faced with 'new technology'). From my recall of the article, the WWII war restrictions had little to do with ALCO's demise, the diesel electric locomotive by the 1930's was already in development as 'cutting edge' technology, for example. ALCO could have started researching diesel engines, I don't think the war restrictions stopped them from doing R and D or planning for the post war period (though obviously WWII put a strain on everything not war related)..
More likely, from what they wrote in the case study and also what I have seen time and again, I think that the management was tied so strongly to steam locomotives because they had such a strong position in that market that they in effect laughed at the diesel market, the way that IBM laughed at the invention of the mini computer and desktop computer and computer networking, they were fat, dumb and happy and didn't see the potential and threat of the diesel, and then had to play catch-up when the tsunami that was diesels hit. The reliability issues they had likely was because they rushed and didn't have enough time to test out designs and get them out the door and were scrambling to play catch up with GM rather than develop products to differentiate themselves (and they could of, but the lack of foresight earlier hurt them). I think that lack of foresight (and to a large extent, the arrogance that likely drove it), simply didn't allow them to catch up, despite later on producing better quality units (or so I have been told). I can just visualize meetings at ALCO with the brass, I am sure there were some bright, perceptive people working there who saw where the market was going to go, made a pitch to start moving towards that market, and were laughed at by the brass and scolded by the bean counters for wanting to 'waste' good money on 'pie in the sky' ideas when they had a perfectly viable product that already had a ton of sunk costs that were already depreciated and paid for.
Just to give you food for thought, think about GM in the 1970's and 80's when the price shocks with gasoline and then the onslaught of foreign cars on all levels hit them, and what their response was....and you get an idea of what happened to ALCO. GM in the early 1970's had roughly 55% of the US market, today it is roughly 25% or so, and it has almost gone under several times since then and required help to stay in business, which ALCO didn't have.
Not to mention there is an axiom, when you analyze business failures and problems, 90% of them are management, the other 10% is other (labor problems, government regulation and stupidity, etc).
Sounds like many businesses today. Some could have been to beat Amazon: Like Sears putting the mail order catalog online.....
Or better customer service.
A company has no value to anybody if they do not have any customers.
Number 90 posted:laming posted:
Alco: Good engines. Bad management decisions. Betrayed by GE.
Andre
And that is the best summary of Alco I have ever read.
When EMC (predecessor to EMD) first started (building gas-electrics) they used GE electrical components. Once EMC got serious with diesel locomotives, they went and developed their own designs of electric gear (generators and traction motors) so they wouldn't be dependent upon an outside contractor, like Alco, Baldwin, and FM.
When GE started seeing Alco's sales faltering they did they smart thing and developed their own line of diesel locomotives. They had plenty of experience with mainline electrics, so what they mainly had to do was find and develop a suitable prime mover. GE didn't stab Alco in the back. They were protecting the market for their products.
Stuart
mark s posted:White Motor Corporation (maker of White Trucks and Farm Equipment) bought Alco's marine engine business in 1970. Perhaps some Alcos are still working out on the waters?
There are a good number of Alco prime movers out there on the water and else where. One interesting example are that 251's power the huge tracked "crawler" that moved the Apollo rockets and later Space Shuttles from the assembly building to the launch pads at the Cape.
I also read. EMD was owned by GM so deeper pockets. Also EMD had the best training and field service.
All scholarly comments, above, are valid. The combination of the 244 fiasco, plus the EMD advantage during WWII and GE's departure, did 'em in. Had the 244 never existed outside of the lab and the 251 powered the postwar locomotives, ALCo could have survived the other slings and arrows of the marketplace.
I have even speculated that GE might not have branched off on its own if ALCo hadn't tied the 244 tin can to its own tail. GE's road unit performance, during its first three decades of production, was far less than stellar.
The 251 remained in production until recently and was listed in the FM Catalog until 2018!
The main sentence that sticks with me from the All Alco issue Trains magazine did several years ago was that as soon as ALCO become the number three builder in an industry that required only two, they were doomed. Long term, I don't see any way that ALCO could have competed with GM and GE unless they were acquired by some other huge conglomerate, and once the initial phase of dieselization was completed, was there REALLY enough business to be had to support three builders, even if all three built a good product? Also don't discount the utter superiority of the EMD two stroke diesel engine. That design is now over 80 years old, and no company on the planet has developed a better overall locomotive prime mover to this very day.
While Alco may have manufactured some good engines, the steady decline in the number of railroads in the USA has surely had an effect. There are now only six large railroads in the USA, seven if you include Genesee Wyoming. Point is that there aren't as many trains on the tracks as there were in the 40's, 50's and 60's. Trucks and automobiles sharply bit into railroad business. The lower demand just shifted to the bigger companies. Lets not forget that Baldwin went under about that time as well and for passenger cars there are no more US owned companies in that business.
Dennis LaGrua posted:While Alco may have manufactured some good engines, the steady decline in the number of railroads in the USA has surely had an effect. There are now only six large railroads in the USA, seven if you include Genesee Wyoming. Point is that there aren't as many trains on the tracks as there were in the 40's, 50's and 60's.
A bit more complicated than that. Neither ALCO, Lima, nor Baldwin could compete what with their "steam locomotive" mentality and designs.
Trucks and automobiles sharply bit into railroad business. The lower demand just shifted to the bigger companies.
No, with the so-called lower demand, both EMD and GE diesel electric locomotives were becoming more reliable and more efficient, and thus the big railroads ned fewer and fewer 4000+ horsepower locomotives, by the 1990s.
Lets not forget that Baldwin went under about that time as well and for passenger cars there are no more US owned companies in that business.
One of the most important reasons for the disappearance of U.S. passenger car, and passenger locomotive, manufacturing was the unbelievably restrictive legal "boiler plate" requirements by government funded purchasing requirements. No U.S. company was willing to agree to be "totally responsible" for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING involved with passenger cars & locomotives (the same legal crap caused General Motors Corp. to exit the bus business)!
Instrad of GE going it alone in the 1950's, why didn't they just buy ALCO for themselves? Everything under one roof including prime mover.
Dominic Mazoch posted:Instrad of GE going it alone in the 1950's, why didn't they just buy ALCO for themselves? Everything under one roof including prime mover.
Another rhetorical question, for which there is no answer. Besides, GE already had "everything under one roof" at their massive Erie, PA manufacturing facility. All GE really needed was a large prime mover to fit inside their newly designed locomotive (U25B), thus they began with the tried and true Cooper Bessemer power plant engine.
The engine that GE bought the rights to they had some experience with. An inline version of the engine, which used the same "unitized cylinder", was purchased from Cooper-Bessemer for use on GE's 70 ton industrial locomotive. When GE bought the rights to the engine, which became the "FDL" (i.e. "Fuel-Diesel- for Locomotive use), it included only the 8 cylinder and the 12 cylinder. And the 8-cyl was rough as a cob, due to being incorrectly balanced. The 16 cylinder used starting with the U25 was developed entirely by a "Diesel Engine Project Group" at Erie, PA, starting in 1953. Due to the inferiority of the Alco 244 and 251, we had no hope that GE could compete with that engine due to its reputation on the nation's railroads. The C-B engine itself had a lot of problems, and only the "relative ease" of replacing individual cylinders kept us alive until we could solve the problems. In the process, the 16 cylinder went from 32,000 lb. to 46,400 lb., the gross HP went from 2750 to 4580, while keeping the same bore and stroke and increasing the max rpm from 1000 to 1050 rpm. The rest of the locomotive was a pretty good basic design, and got better once we could afford the tooling and fixturing to build it in a repetitive manner. (The early years of manufacturing featured a lot of manufacturing variance since hand fitting was the order of the day. In the early days, we could not even build an operators cab that would pass a rain test!)
I recall sitting at a pool with a bunch of railroad mechanical officers at an LMOA meeting in Chicago. One of them asked me for a list "of all the changes that GE made to the engine". I told them to look around at the skyscrapers in view from our vantage point. I told them that I could "wallpaper every vertical surface" in their sight with AN's (i.e. Alteration Notices) to the engine design that GE bought from C-B. They did not seem to understand that we had been working HARD and CONTINUOUSLY on the entire GE locomotive since the introduction of the U25. Progress never stops, and neither does Erie.....
I won't address what it cost to get to the present day. You wouldn't believe it...….
I think customer service was a big part of it. If you bought EMD engines and contacted them about a problem, an EMD rep would be there the next day. Sometimes GM repair guys would go out with parts and work on an engine too. Could be location had something to do with it - Chicagoland is a lot more centrally located than ALCO's location in the east. GM folks could get to the customer quickly no matter whether they were in Florida or California.
Hudson5432:
You answered my question. Thanks.
Hi, It was hard to find a place to ask this question. That being, were any ALCO DL-109's saved, and if so, where? I always found their styling to be distinctive, even if they weren't the best runners. Not being a great ALCO fan, having experience with them in the past, I wasn't sure where this info could be found. TIA for any info. Don Francis
Don Francis posted:Hi, It was hard to find a place to ask this question. That being, were any ALCO DL-109's saved, and if so, where?
To the best of my knowledge, they were all scrapped.
I always found their styling to be distinctive, even if they weren't the best runners. Not being a great ALCO fan, having experience with them in the past, I wasn't sure where this info could be found. TIA for any info. Don Francis
Don Francis posted:Hi, It was hard to find a place to ask this question. That being, were any ALCO DL-109's saved, and if so, where? I always found their styling to be distinctive, even if they weren't the best runners. Not being a great ALCO fan, having experience with them in the past, I wasn't sure where this info could be found. TIA for any info. Don Francis
The last DL-109 was scrapped in 1969. Painted orange and numbered (New Haven) PP-716, it was being used as a power plant for a New Haven/Penn Central third rail test track.
Rusty
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