Alco's Biggest mistake: The Pony Truck Affair The story of what would become the SAR Class 32,000

The locomotive that alco didn't build but should have and would cost them dearly!

You Tube links:
Alco RS-1
baldwinloco12

Class 32-000
Riekus Van Der Westhuizen

GE Erie plant
Pittsburgh Mainline Productions

Picture licenses:

[MLWQC]

WOW this is quite the revelation and historically important information.Unbelievable!

[monkeyeagle]

As an South African, this was great. Thanks

[UrMomsChauffer]

This is a very interesting piece of history. Thank you for making this video.

[RailRide]

Funny this showed up in my recommendeds...I had heard somewhere that the pony truck design was put forward as the cure for the electric E60CP's instability (truck hunting) at speeds above 90MPH.

[wjsj]

VERY interesting! Who knew that this one decision caused the success of GE and the downfall of ALCO!

[Wolfsspuren]

Wow, what a piece of information you got there...
In Argentina, we had GE locos that gained the nickname of "Cooper" because of those engines, those were almost the same GE locomotives from the White Pass in Alaska.
Now sadly no one is in service, but in my city train shops are a lot of that model sitting arround.
What a great video, keep going please!!!
Greetings from Argentina!!!

[WIILIAMHOWELL]

Great video. The information about Perry Egbert, and his horrible decision was new to me. One real bad decision killed a company and gave an almost dead competitor the upper hand. You would’ve thought Egbert was a plant!

[riekusvanderwesthuizen]

The Class 32 was known for its exceptional ride quality. Was a very smooth train. The FBVL-12 was also an extremely aggressive engine. Whilst it was geared high and proved to be very popular on passenger service like “Die Suidwester”, it was also used for freight. According to legend, running solo, very few cars of the era could accelerate with it.

The model I showed was the 32 000 and later, 10x 32-200 were ordered from GE. These were fitted with the first incarnation of the GE 7FDL-12.and was the U20C1 model.

As you rightly mentioned, these paved the way for the class33 at 2000hp of which 180 in total were ordered. Some of them running until 2011 and currently being rebuilt and hired out by Traxtion….. they are still running!

[oldman]

So basically Alco’s refusal to build to customer specs saved GE’s locomotive business.

[noelhass]

Very interesting video, I drove ALCO locomotives in South Australia in the 1980s. The early ALCOs had GE electric gear in them, as per your video, the later ones had AEI equipment in them.

[odenviking]

thanks for a vrey intresting fact video about alcos products .
keep up the good work.
👍👍👍👍🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪

[AndrewTheRocketCityRailfan]

Thanks for shari’g the story! I could never seen this coming

[kelvintorrence]

Dont mess with my alco s, i love those heavy chain smokin mothers to this day

[supercuda]

Not only did Alco engineering hurt their rep but GM saw a chance to help Alco fail by taking trade=ins (of all kinds) and offering deals on their own products.

[C]

Most excellent video and thoroughly researched. Your hard work was worth it!

[ducky_the_helper]

It's cool seeing world series locos not in NSWGR or CR liverys it's interesting that the African variant of the 44 class follows the same number sequence just as a SAR 55 class

[alejandrobarraganlopez]

Great vídeo and good to see how many things happend south the border ❤

[Tom-Lahaye]

This explains very well why a GE loco has ALCO pattern trucks
But there was another GE product predating the class 32-000 by one year in South Africa, those were the 45 members strong class 31-000, these Bo-Bo locomotives used a V-8 version of the Cooper Bessemer engine having 1200hp.
The 2 axle trucks of the 31-000 was also similar to ALCO's own 2 axle trucks.
Oddly the Cooper-Bessemer engines were a bit more successful in SA, as these locomotives saw mainline and later shunting duties until almost the turn of the century, and a few remained in private service until at least 2015.
But had Alco not waved off the 1-Co-Co-1 design we would have seen a large fleet of Alco locomotives in SA, maybe locally produced like the Australian and Indian counterparts.

Btw the Swiss company which improved the design of the FDL series engine was Sulzer.

[frankmarkovcijr]

Alco came out with a 251 which was an excellent locomotive engine which still Powers 50% of the Canadian railroad Fleet. EMT push c567 engine to the 645 version and later the 710 version and suffered problems from pushing the engine to shine too hard and it failed regularly. To have a 5000 horsepower locomotive in the 1950s and 60s who had for diesel locomotive on the head end. 30 years later you had one locomotive doing the work of four. EMD unit reduced itself right out of business. One of the reasons they're Canadian plant is still active is because they do not have to pay for health insurance for the employees as they do in America. General Motors would kill a plant on the American side of the Canadian border because they would have to pay for health insurance where is the Canadian government would take care of the employees on the other side of the river therefore it was cheaper to build cars in Canada than it was in Detroit. There are many reasons that are more subtle as to why railroad purchased certain locomotive. Big companies like EMD and General Electric would give railroad sweetheart deals such as twice as much value for trade-in as locomotive scrap. They would also financed the purchase of locomotives for substandard roads who could not afford to pay cash. There was an excellent article and trains magazine written by a Salesman who used to work for Fairbanks Morse railroads would be interested in buying their locomotives but General Electric or General Motors would give them a much better deal that fairbanks-morse would not be able to match. Chevy gave you more money for a trade-in than if you went to a DeSoto dealer that naturally you would buy from the Chevy dealer it did not mean that the DeSoto was bad. Ashfur world war production board limitations General Motors locomotive engines were required for use in Navy submarines as were fairbanks-morse opposed twin engines as well. There were times EMD would only build one locomotive a month because all of their other engines were conscripted for Navy Duty. The Westinghouse electrical gear that was favored by Baldwin locomotives were very reliable in switcher service but when Baldwin started to make Road locomotives they would suffer failure of electrical component that would lead to failures out on the road. When fairbanks-morse trainmasters had electrical failures from Westinghouse electrical gear they switched over to General Electric instead and Westinghouse exited the market. Things are much different than what surface appearances are.

[BudTheDrummer]

The wheels on the front and rear of a Steam Locomotive are called Pilot and Trolley Wheels respectively.