I own an erection card drawing from the American Locomotive Works and I recently came across the problem of not having an idea what size it was. I read somewhere a while back that Lima drawings were made to 1 1/2 inch scale. Did Alco follow this process? The Drawing has the date issued as being April, 12th 1926. Also, what would the dimensions of the sheet be? I see z filling a small table at the top of the sheet but I cannot read the table at the bottom of the sheet. I am guessing that this is the size of the sheet since I cant see any sheet size possibilities anywhere else.

FWIW, the diesel loco drawings were done 1-1/2" to the foot, which would make a sheet length of 6 to 8 feet.

Thanks for that info! Were all the drawings for diesels on paper of the same width?

I have an RS3 print and its also 1.5"-1'. Perfect for the Live Steam RS3 I plan on building...

Hey Nova, that looks great! How wide is your drawing?

"Live STEAM" RS3? I don't think so, but more power to you!

That would be Live Steam scale..1/8th..But a steam RS3? Why not? A scale 244 would be cool also!

Without measuring it, its around 8-10' long and 24-30" tall. Ill get a more specific number later on.

This is going from memory, back 15-20 years ago when I inventoried all the Alco drawings for ex GW #60 when I was at Black River.

Alco drawing numbers fit a standard format. ### S #######. The first two digits reference a general category. For instance, 213 S ###### is "group 21" which is ashpans or something like that... I haven't seen the drawings for a very long time though. Oh, and as I recall the groups were alphabetical (at least in 1937), so Ashpans (21) came before Bells (22)... (I may have the numbers completely wrong here though.

What I am trying to get to here is that the 3rd digit in the print number refers to the size (not the scale) of the actual drawing sheet, which Alco had a variety of different standard (to them) sized drawing sheets. If I was in Ringoes, I could pull the schedule of drawings and tell you exactly what size your drawing is.... and from there you could work out the scale based on some dimension on the sheet.

I know this doesn't help you, but at least somewhere there exists a way to rescale a scan of a drawing that is no longer at a known scale.

As I recall the "S" was for Schenectady... the 3rd grouping of digits varied in length from 4 to 6 digits and was a detail number, which was referenced in an original book Alco had supplied to Great Western, which I had used to neatly organize these in a flatfile. I was amazed exactly how complete our set for #60 was... I had been able to make a list of missing drawings... and it would have been great to complete the set, but I never took it to that level... They may be very specific detail drawings for that particular order... they may be general arrangement drawings or pin schedules... Now I wish I had digitized the entire collection.

RCW

Great information RCW! It is nice to know this now, who knows how much it could help one in the future! My drawings have the following number: 420 S 33220. I am not so sure that the S stands for Schenectady though, as the locomotive in the drawings was built at the Richmond locomotive works. Maybe it stands for where the drawing was made?

I have a complete set of drawings, (well, almost; 4 out of 557 are missing) for Coos Bay #11, built in 1929. According to the card record that came with them, the first two numbers are the "classification" (ash pan, axle, boiler, etc.) the third number is the size, the letter is the "works" where the drawing was made , followed by the actual drawing number.

Sizes were as follows

1) 9 x 12
2) 12 x 18
3) 18 x 24
4) 24 x 30
5) 12 x 42
6) 12 x 60
7) 24 x 42
8) 24 x 60
9) 25 x 66
10) 25 x 24

All the drawings I have show the actual dimensions, or some are labeled A, B, C, etc, with a table listing those dimensions, which vary, depending on what is stated in the card record.

Hey Jim, thats great, but I do not have the card record unfortunately. The drawings came from the Alco Historic Photos. Would they be the ones to inquire about the card record? I have also contacted the SRHA but they said they did not have the time to look for a few items in their massive collection. I plan to make a trip down to their archives this coming summer and look through their archive for anything related to the Ms-4. If ACH does not have the card record, hopefully they do!

Btw: Where did you get the rest of the drawings for Coos Bay #11? As far as I am aware of, ACH only has erection cards.

First, I must correct a typo in my first note.. Size 10 drawings are 25 x 84.

To show you what a card record looks like, I've attached the first page (of 19) for Coos Bay 11. And, I've attached a drawing of a boiler brace. The number 47 on both the drawing and the card record have been added by me to simplify the filing system. Note that the card record specifies exactly which dimensions of the four shown on the sheet are to be used.

I'm afraid I can't tell you where to find a card record for a specific engine.

I was extremely lucky to get the drawings for Coos Bay 11, the engine I am working on. Out of the blue I got an e-mail stating, "I have a set of drawings for Coos Bay 11. Would you be interested in having them?" It was from Quentin Roesner, a forester for Plum Creek Timber, the company that now uses the old Coos Bay Lumber facilities. He had been doing a safety inspection of an old building, and found them in a file cabinet. He figured someone might be interested, ans asked a rail fan friend of his to find out who might be interested. A very, very exceptional person to go to that work.

Jim,

There is a slight possibility that the 4 missing drawings can be had. PM me the 4 DWG #s you are missing and I will try to get a hold of someone in Ringoes to check what we have. There was also an oddball binder with Alco drawings that I thought at first was for 148, but when I start looking through them they were not.

Nelson Tower or Bill Manes had, at some point, taken all of the smaller drawings for 60 and had vellums made... which were very useful for me, as I had access to a diazotype blueprint machine at my father's home office.

I recall when the ashpan had to be rebuilt prior to 60 going back into service in the early/mid 1990s, I was able to do the fabrication just about completely off the print (like it should be)... just, I had to work the trig for where the slope of the side sheets, ties into the circularly curved "bottom" sheet as it curved over the 4th driver axle. With that information, I was able to cut the steel "bottom" sheet's sides to the proper shape so that after being formed into place with a roller for the top part as it goes over the axle, the sides had the right angle to attach the flat but slanted side sheets of the ashpan.

Anyways, let's see if we have what it takes to complete your drawing set for No. 11.

Rod Whitehead

p.s. That Card Record is virtually identical in layout to what I had for No. 60 to go by... Ashpans.... classification number 10! Hahaha!

Is there one location where all the known info about the ALCO drawing organization/cataloging system is kept? Like that 1-100 title block list? and the 1-10 paper size code list?

ALCO burned their archive in about 1969 and created a huge void for us all to fill in the ALCO drawing and archive knowledge base, but that doesn't mean we can not piece it all back together by looking at complete sets from various years and extrapolating the info that we see in them. Full sets of drawings, such as the ex GW #60 and Coos Bay 11 add extremely valuable to others who are working on cataloging their own ALCO drawings.

I can think of a couple of RR's that own ALCO locomotives that have just a few of their builders drawing that are trying to organize their partial sets and try to find the missing drawings to complete their sets. They could use all the known information about the ALCO systems to help put their set together and predict what drawings are missing, and what drawings they could use from other locomotive sets to aid in their efforts.

Gents, I was wondering if you have any of the drawings for the DL&W 565. We need to find out about the ashpan. Any help would be greatly appreciated.