Why not a C428?

[jbacon1361]

I'm a big ALCo fan but I'm dismayed by the stupid engineering decisions that ALCo made. No wonder they went out of business. Especially when GE told them to redesign their prime mover back in 1952. They could've done so much better. But a friend of mine many years ago, An X Pennsy engineer, that the prime mover had various weakness to it and that ALCo gave up trying to fix the problems. But also the rail-fan literature talks about how fickle EMD GP-35 GP-30 and even the GP 40s were. He called the GP-35 and GP-30 "pieces of junk".
Does any one have a drawing of a C-428? I think it would look like a short C-628 or a short C430. More later.

[tgibson]

Hi,

But they did rework their prime mover by 1952 - it was called the 251 engine, and powered almost everything built since 1956 or so.

From what I've heard the engine itself was not the major problem, but the engineering of all the other systems, design decisions like ladders instead of steps, ride quality, the lack of a large support organization (think GM), and most of all the corporate instability that did them in.

[Allen Hazen]

JBacon--
I don't know if any drawings of the proposed C428 were ever published, but I have read several times that it would have looked like a C425.

[jbacon1361]

Another friend of mine said that even as late as 1960, there were those who deliberately undermineded diesel locomotive development in Baldwin, Lima and even ALCo. They were still trying to bring back the Steam locomotive. But by 1968 it was way too late and those were retired. Even by 1960 it would've been possible. But by then the Diesel proved it's worth and a second generation was in full production and a horsepower race was shaping up and a new player (GE) on the block showed up. But the most important aspect was that the Diesel Locomotive saved the railroads.

[Tadman]

Someone asked about CNW's retirement of their C628 fleet - from what I understand, management thought they could run equal-sized trains with two SD50 instead of three C628. Given that the SD50 was a dog, this failed pretty quickly and the outcome was triple SD50 and SD60.