Today at the North Alabama Railroad Museum we had our first weekend of Fall Color Trips. We decided to make our afternoon run a little special. We brought S-2 484 out of semi retirement and made a double headed S-2 run with her sister 213. We also had our other engine on the east end of the train, an Alco RSD1 number 8652. 484 is pretty tired but we are hoping to repair it over the next year or so if we can come up with enough good parts.

I suspect that Huntsville Alabama was the only place anywhere today where you could find 3 Alco 539T's running on the same train.

You can see the video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOKhgzcr ... er&list=UL

Enjoy

Jimmy

That's impressive! What is the heritage of those two S2s ?

484 was originally Erie Lackawanna and 213 was originally Manufactures Railway from St. Louis. 484 was built in 1949 and 213 was build in 1941.

Jimmy

Any idea if she was Erie or Lackawanna originally?

Rob

Erie, I believe.

Is there a volunteer by the name of Hugh D. still at the NARM? I used to send letters and photos back and forth but seem to have lost contact some years back.

Wes

Original heritage was DLW 484. It became EL 543.

Hugh D. is still around. He is the director of museum operations.


Jimmy

I stand corrected. And I will post a letter off to Hugh shortly- hope he hasn't moved, I have! Please pass on my regards if you see him.

Wes

The 213 was built in 7/41 for the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. It was their number 571. It was sold to the MRS on 1/74 and operated there until 1982 when it was sold to Reynolds Metals. It operated at their Sheffield, AL plant, until presumably ending up at NARM.

The MRS was an Anheuser-Busch property, and was a very spit polish operation. The locomotives were waxed and kept clean inside and out.

Interesting. I had heard some stories that 213 may have came from TRRA originally but had not ever seen anything affirmative on it. I had no idea on the original number. You can still see the MRS lettering if you look closely at the correct angle and the green paint overspray is still on the back of the doors on the hood. I think we actually purchased it from the city of Huntsville a number of years back. It had not ran in probably 10 years. A few years after we purchased it we pulled it out and tried in vain to get the batteries to charge up enough to turn it over but they were just too far gone. I finally built some jumper cables (4 0 welding cable) and after we changed the fuel filters we hit the start button and it roared to life like nothing was wrong. It ran great but would not load at all. I found and replaced an open resistor in the exciter circuit viola it has been working ever since. There has been a few little issues that has popped up here and there but overall it has been very reliable for something that is 70 years old. It will pull circles around 484 and I will try to get my son to shoot some video of it pulling the hill next week. It and the RSD1 both pull and run great! 484...not so much :-( at least for now

Jimmy

Jimmy,

No problem, the MRS has been of great interest to me the past couple of years, as I live in the neighborhood it serves. I've done a lot of resarch, with an eye toward eventually building an operations based layout of the MRS in HO scale one of these days.

The original MRS paint scheme was a dark blue and red, but was replaced by the green paint in 1952 or so.

Does the 213 have MU control? The Alco S2s built for it did.

No MU. I see no evidence that it ever had it.

jb

Alco fans should be aware that Orange Empire Ry. Museum (oerm.org) in Perris CA has three Alco diesels with 539-turbo charged engines: Two RSD-1's that came from the US Department of Transportation after serving on military railways, and S-4 Southern Pacific 1474. The RSD-1's can run in MU and have done so on occasion. As far as I know, the SP S-4 is non-MU.
Back around 40 years ago, when I worked for the Santa Fe, they had several Alco S-2's that had been fitted with EMD control stands for MU service; not sure if any of these have survived.

They converted six S-2's and seven S-4's. Only the 2350 remains, and she still runs.

Britt Bettell