The C424m came to pass in the 1979 when the Genesee and Wyoming offered the D&H three locomotives in lieu of increased rate divisions for handling the salt from Retsof to the B&M at Mechanicville. The GNWR was originally thinking of new GP39-2's since the D&H already had 40 of them. Turned out that new locomotives were more than they wanted to spend, so the talks turned to used Alco C-424's that would be remanufactured. I was CMO at the time and I did not want as-built C-424's because 1} they had 16 cylinder engines and the D&H Alco fleet had 12 cylinder engines. There are some parts that are not totally interchangable between the 12 and 16 cylinder engines and 2} the C-424 had the multi-step shunt controller for transition which was a source of loading problems and maintenance headaches. However, we said, if you want to use the C-424 as a core, rewire it to the Lehigh Valley C-420 wiring diagram and replace the 16 cylinder engine with a 12 cylinder engine, we are interested. Genesee and Wyoming agreed and as they say, the rest is history. The 1st three, 461-463 were delivered in 1979, then later, in early 1980 the D&H got 6 more, 451-456, with D&H financing. The last 6 are slightly different, having a redesigned rear cab bulkhead control panel and a cooling air system in the Main Generator compartment.
Of the 3 GNWR financed units, one, 461, was wrecked and the other 2 went to the Minnesota Commercial. Since then, one, I believe 462 was sold to National Railway Equipmet Co and the other is in service.
Of the 6 D&H units, 4 are on the LA&L/WNY&P and 2 were scrapped by Guilford.
I guess my only regret in this project was that we did not install Alternators instead of DC Main Generators.
Fred Cheney