#alco

Alco "Black Beast"

I figured that now is the best time to get into doing Santa Fe drawings. On top of that, this is also my first attempt at a drawing of one of my favorite diesels, the ALCO PA.

Reference Image: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ef5133fe97a1d249ac3fe6b/1593539889738-XTPKNHN9PN6KF7JAKZTL/ALCO_PA_59L_in_Service_May_15_1966_San_Diego_CROP.jpg

outside a defunct "ALCO" big box. holbrook, ariz. february 2024

Unmistakably Alco

The image was made on a humid day about five miles south-east of Charleston, Illinois. We're standing along one of the several routes owned by the Indiana Hi-Rail Corporation—this particular line was once the Nickel Plate Road.

Number 332, working for the Indiana Hi-Rail Corporation, is an Alco C420. Discerning the lineage of this locomotive was interesting: to begin with, the gray color made me think of the Louisville & Nashville.

Indeed the engine ran for the L&N as number 1332. [It seems that IHRC simply removed the “1” to create a new number: 332.] But the story goes on: the bell on the nose is a tip-off that this locomotive once labored for the Monon (subsumed into the L&N in 1971). The Alco C420 was purchased new for the Hoosier Line in August of 1967 and worked with the number of 515.

C1807 Micro Malfunction