Several of my wife’s family members worked in Schenectady building these. I’m an engineer on a railroad which had mostly Alcos back in the day, and her grandfather used to tell me stories about building these.
Guess the fashion now is to make engines scream and roll coal, but I've always been more impressed with one purring along smoothly and quietly. Not a thing wrong with this baby, ticking over like a watch and purring like it came out of the plant yesterday. These old Alcos are great, have got some real character to them when they're running.
the obnoxious stuff is an equal and opposite reaction to the electrics and modern cars with tiny, silenced 3 cylinders. "look at me, i'm a diesel!" instead of quietly passing by.
That was awesome, thanks for sharing. Would love to see more close up views of every single part on these beautiful locomotives. I'm going to try to model one in 1.6" Scale getting parts together so it would help me bigly. My Dad and his Dad were locomotive engineers on these for the South Buffalo Railway and he would teach me how to operate them when I was a kid back in the late 1960's👍👍
I have an Alco RS 3 on my railroad. It's an old school DC loco and doesn't have sound. Until now! I can run this on a speaker under my train layout. Thanks!
The RS3 has a 244 not a 539. 539’s can be found in the S1 & S3. 539T can be found in the S2, S4, & RS1. The 539 was also used in a few marine and power generation applications, but the 251 was far superior for those applications.
I love this, been a long time since I’ve heard that sound. Very few left in running condition. I remember seeing S2s working on the Chestnut Ridge Railroad and at the New Jersey Zinc facilities in Palmerton, PA. Also had an up close experience with CNJ 1067, also an S2 working on old Lehigh and New England trackage in Nazareth, PA in 1972. Became friends with the old L&NE crews so I got a short ride while they drilled cars in town. BTW what’s the heritage of the loco and where was this located? On another note a former L&NE S2 #611 is being restored locally by a group. It’s the only surviving L&NE diesel locomotive that I know of. Thanks for the memories.
Still a small number of ALCo's running in Australia, mostly "World Series" DL531's and a small number of DL541's plus DL500G and CE615 (MLW), slowly disappearing into the sunset they are. Plenty of video on my site of anyone interested under 48, 45, 44, 442 and 80 class. Great clip, enjoyed it.
