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Originally Posted by Enginear-Joe:

 I was thinking of getting a pair of broken Alco PA's for scratch building something else. When they were retired and I'm guessing scrapped later on, did they get traded in for rebuilds?

 Were just the trucks re-used under something else?

No, not by EMD. Only the EMD two axle GP and SW truck frames & bolsters were remanufactured and reused, from traded in units. Three axle trucks went for scrap. Some railroads requested that the ALCO two axle truck assemblies, including the GE Traction Motors (remanufactured of course), be reused under GP30s and GP35s.

Enginear Joe, real Alco-GE PA's lasted into the early 1960's, but some roads such as LV, PRR, E-L, and UPRR bumped them to freight for their last few years.  I think Southern's 4 cab units were the first to go.  Southern Pacific and Santa Fe kept theirs running into the late 1960's.

 

The smooth-riding trucks, which had traction motors only on the outer axles were not designed for freight service, and, while they worked, on locomotives running off their last years, they were not something that would have been desirable on a replacement unit in an age of declining passenger train miles.  Only 2/3 of the weight of the locomotive was on drivers.  No railroad would spend money on new locomotives with those reclaimed trucks.

Last edited by Number 90
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