Alco Locomotives - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I found this picture hanging on the wall in a local diner the other day. It is a draftsman's rendering of two locomotives that were built in 1914 by a company called American Locomotive Company (Alco) that was located in Schenectady, NY. It's not such a great photograph what with my unsteady hand on my phone's camera and the unavoidable glow of an incandescent lamp reflecting in the center, but the original drawing itself was very much a work of art.

This drawing being over a century old, it was created entirely by skilled hands. It was created using straight edges, a compass and a French curve by a highly skilled draftsman. All of the lettering was done by hand and there is even a missing period in one of the notes for the lower locomotive.

Nobody is perfect, right?

What really fascinated me though was that these two locomotives were exactly alike except for one thing. The distances between the rearmost drive wheels and the trailing wheels are just two inches different.

That two inch difference carries over to the Total Wheel Base, the Over Couplers and the Over All dimension as well.

I would love to know how that difference came about. Even though they were built in two different shops, I would have thought that the goal would have been to make them exactly the same, but maybe someone made a mistake of some kind.

Nobody is perfect, right?

I guess that's true, but stand in awe Oh Ye of the AutoCad Generation and admire the work of a true master.

Comments

[stu senator]

John
There is a difference in the specs for the fire box. This probably accounts for the difference in length.

If this was done in ink it was not a fast drawing. In pencil it was a bit easier, in autocad fairly quicker and if the second drawing person had access to the first drawing the length could be changed in about 30 seconds including thinking about it.

Using ink or pencil and not concerned with scale if you had access to the first drawing you would make a sepia (a copy on a blue print on special semi transparent paper) and make the changes on the sepia.

Having used ink, pencil and autocad I much prefer a cad system.

Stu

[William Denale]

The difference is in the firebox as mentioned. Note that one firebox is WAT 1926 and the other AlCO 1925. The note on the AlCO also states a third course. This would refer to the brick lining inside the firebox where the coal and fire were made. The extra two inches is probably the extra course of bricks as firebox lining brick were roughly 2 inches in depth. There is an ALCO technical and Historical Society that may have the detailed specs.