Railroad Forums 

  • Alco Super 630?

  • Discussion of products from the American Locomotive Company. A web site with current Alco 251 information can be found here: Fairbanks-Morse/Alco 251.
Discussion of products from the American Locomotive Company. A web site with current Alco 251 information can be found here: Fairbanks-Morse/Alco 251.

Moderator: Alcoman

 #1093806  by drvmusic
 
Hi All,

I have an HO model Alco Super 630 and was wondering if anyone knows if this existed in real life?

The one I have is a Santa Fe, though I doubt Santa Fe actually owned one. The number on it is the same number Tyco gave all railroad models of the Alco Super 630, so I know the number is not real.

Thanks!
 #1094647  by Allen Hazen
 
(1) I think the Santa Fe's last purchase of Alco locomotives was for Dl-600 units in 1959-1960, so they never had any of the Alco "Century" series (built 1963-1968-- the C-630 was introduced in 1965). The Santa Fe was popular, and I think several manufacturers of model/toy railroad equipment issued "Santa Fe" paint jobs on types that the Santa Fe never actually had.
(2) Tyco also produced an Alco C-430 (the 4-axle analogue of the 6-axle C-630) with a low short hood: when they followed with a C-630 model they gave it a high short hood, and got some praise from the model railroad community for making "kit bashing" easier. (This was, I think, some time in the 1970s.)
 #1114615  by theastralcity
 
The "Super 630" was a Tyco model that was intended originally to be the ALCO Century 630 high-hood. Only the very first models actually have prototypical trucks (with unequal spacing) while all of the later models had Tyco's fictional 3 axle "vampire truck" nicknamed so because the deep frames looked like vampire teeth. Most modern model railroaders have replaced these on their layouts with the vastly superior Stewart/Bowser C630, although it may have value to vintage toy train collectors depending on the model and condition.

A good article on it, including all of the road names is over at ho-scaletrains.net, along with others on every other Tyco product: http://www.ho-scaletrains.net/tycobrown ... s/id9.html