Well, bcr had their alcos (mlw) in mainline service well into the 90s, NYS&W into the 2000s, so it isn't improbably. Just rare.
Also the Delaware-Lackawanna also runs ALCOs, exclusively, I think. Plus the Arkansas & Missouri is also exclusively an ALCO-haulic.
A&M is indeed 100% Alco, and in fact had a couple of units in BCR colors for a while before they were repainted. Currently, they have a couple of M420s running around in badly faded-out CN colors, which clash with the pristine maroon of the other Alcos.
So now, My question is, just what exactly IS this freelance/Protolance RR you want to model, anyway? All Class 1 means is "having annual carrier operating revenues of $250 million or more"(-Wikipedia) be that being able to do it in thirty miles or thirty thousand miles of track. Obviously, it is somewhat dependennt on length of your mainline so that you have enough room for enough industries, but all it really depends on is capital. So lets talk short-length railroads with hifgh dollar clientele, shall we? Or, even compromising, let's pull an INRD and step down to Class 2? They run a heck of a railroad, after all.
Morgan- Just to clarify here- What Wikipedia provides, as quoted above, is actually incomplete information. The number quoted above is only the baseline amount. There is a formula used for calculation, to which the $250M is added. The actual final figure varies annually. It is and has been above $250M for a long time.
Arkansas and Missouri, at least at the time of Pentrex's visit, seemed to have the best maintained fleet of Alcos. A club-mate brought a book on Alcos last night to show us all something I had never heard of before - the C855. I didn't believe it until he showed me the photo, and now I totally want one. http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=784891 On initial glances, I am thinking a U50 might make a good donor mech. The shell would be quite a kit-bash.
The Con-Cor u50 models seem to show up in fantasy schemes for not too much, and since I don't really need the shell...
I knew about the C855. Ok, my protolance road...certainly doesn't justify Alcos in mainline service. I've described the vision before, but I'll do it again. Imagine if you would the following alternate reality. 1: The Rock still ceases to exist, but none of its Track/ROW is removed. 2: The Union Pacific's takeover of the Southern Pacific encounters the same type of counter offer that happened in the Conrail split. In essence, my Class 1 is a plausible combination of Rock Island, The Rio Grande and the Western Pacific (It used to be the SP Donner Pass Line, but I realized that operationally for both UP and my new entity, the WP makes more sense.) Some ex MP trackage from Pueblo and the SP coast Line, CORP (Sisikyous line) and Portland And Western round out the basic Chicago to West coast network. Certain sections of trackage in California particularly in the Bay area and LA basin are managed as the SP shared assets. Most of that is of course going to be nothing but fiction in a word file. I personally am probably going to model a section meant to represent Oregon and a section meant to represent the midwest (chicago subrubs) So no, mainline Alcos don't make much sense at least on high priority freight...or at least, 4 motor under 3000HP alcos don't make much sense. Which is why I was talking about the idea of Road slugs and rebuilds. On the other hand, given the disparate makeup of the railroad, I have no issues keeping a couple alcos on for local service. In fact, one of the fun things I see a lot in posts to the Protolance Special Interest group on Yahoo is major in house engine rebuilds. Like how NS uses Altoona. Its a common aspect at least among that group to make plausible what if engine rebuilds. As I mentioned, the Alco engine designs are alive and well in India. I could claim that under license my railroad's (The Chicago Denver & Central Pacific by the way) Motive power shops are looking at a modern Alco to compete with Progress, EMD, Brookville, etc...
So now I wonder- ALCo of the past had distinctive spotting features. What would one look like today, as a North American design?
An interesting question. I would hazard to guess that they would use the Canadian wide cab which is what their MLW 535Es on the White Pass and Yukon and the USG Plaster City Narrow guage lines used. http://drgw.free.fr/WP&YR/Engines/Diesel/WPYR-01-284-th.jpg The next question to ask would be how would the radiator section be modified to accommodate the split cooling needed to meet exhaust requirements. The answer is: Probably the same way EMD and GE and Progress do it, with a larger radiator section overhanging the walkways. Probably start with something like the C/M636 and modify from there. http://www.trainweb.org/westernrails/ca/dbt-1001_stockton_5-08-83_JohnBauer.jpg http://www.railpage.org.au/pix/diesel/2264-0053.jpg It looks like Radiator Intake is low by the walkways just like an EMD tunnel motor and that's how GE does it as well, so I'd probably look at the detail of the Rad section and at a GE rad section and bash the 2 together plausibly.
Are we making this a bit more complicated then it needs to be? Is this the engineering influence of a choosen profession? Are we making up words as in "Protolance"? I said with a big mischievious grin. "It's your railroad and you make the rules", quoting Jim 157. He would also tell you to have some, "Fun". May I suggest, pick out the rational you want, add a story to make it interesting and keep the darn things. Oh, don't forget a paint scheme. Then I want to see some pictures of them running on your layout...ahh...when you get it built. Now get busy, you are on my bucket list and I want to see your layout with these eyes and not haunting eyes. If you get my drift.
Protolance is a term used in the hobby extensively. It has it's own special interest group on Yahoo. We've had a thread on here where we disagreed about the exact meaning, I'd describe it as originally a Model Railroad in the mold of the Virginia & Ohio and the Allegheny Midland. 2 very famous model railroads that essentially defined the "genre." It is a freelance railroad company that is backstoried and runs their operations prototypically. More recently, I've seen that the term refers more to a plausibility of back story and the where/why/how of your railroad and less about the Model railroad operations. In other words, you don't just do what you want, you have an entire reason for why your railroad does it that way and the reasoning is consistent. I personally don't care to take it to the extreme that say Koester did, but that is in broad terms my aim. Of course I can do what ever I want. What I want is to have a model railroad that conforms in some sense to a set of arbitrary rules that make me happy. So, figuring out a legitimate and logical reason why something like Alcos on a modern class 1 would happen is a part of the set of arbitrary rules that make me happy. Just saying "eh, it's my railroad, I'll do what I want makes me UNHAPPY. So why would I use that as a reason? There is a great disconnect I see often on this website. Sometimes having rules is part of the fun. The rule for me is "try to make it plausible." Why would a Class 1 railroad have a set of Alcos working on the system? Likely Answers? Inherited through an acquisition and still serviceable. Modified to meet a more typical standard. In my case, the likely reason is a bit of both. The hard question is, given that, how do I justify these units still being in that paint scheme...assuming they weren't just purchased.
Protolance is just a contraction of the older term Proto-Freelance. Both have been around quite some time.
Just daydreaming here. Thinking it would be nice to see a distinctive enough variation from the little boxes seemingly so similar to being the same these days. Ah, the days when each company was so obvious by their outward appearances.
Not sure I agree with number 3 below as I think it's too broad, but this is the definition for the PFMSIG http://trains.rockycrater.org/pfmsig/ It all depends on your point of view. As recently as the SD70, you could tell and EMD by the fact that it had round fans atop the radiator and a pointed tail with Teardrop front windows. With the ACe, the Fans are technically still there, but you struggle to see them behind the oversized Grills. Similarly, GEs have a distinct wide cab shape and the huge radiator Wings. It still has these, but the EMD's big radiator make the distinction a bit harder at a distance. I think, at least in my world, Alco/MLW/Bombardier/my railroad sticks with the canadian cab and has huge radiator wings like GE, but not exactly the same. Pondering this some more though, I think the hardest part would be the boagie. I've kind of graduated from rebuilds to new production mainline units. What would a modern Alco ride on? Surely not the same six axle truck they used to use. At least the electricals are actually easier. They use Siemens or maybe some Chinese brand imported for the purpose.
