Thread: Alco 48 class loco pics

Originally Posted by 3-Gees

*snip*the CLP's are a favourite amongst Railfans,big and loud,

Certainly loud .... just can't beat the growl of a GM 2-stroke. In fact living beside the tracks, I used to get woken by a dirty old GM hauling oil cars nearly every week night and it never bothered me in the slightest .... just loved that sound! The only problem was that you couldn't set your clock by him.

Just re-read what you said, Gregg .... CLP13 is currently part of QRNational ... as of around 2008?


Cheers,
Daz.

But how does a Ground Relay Trip trigger a gravitational fault large enough to shift the loco a couple of meters left of the track?

It obviously tripped over the ground!!!!
......sorry,couldn't help it

I took these pics a few years ago when I was working in Selebe Phikwe in Botswana. We had to cross the railway line to get to the airport and often saw this loco hauling ore to the processing plant.
It was oil fired and we always got a wave as we took photos. Obviously they knew we were the ones with the strange looking aircraft ( The flying nissan hut)

were many steam locos converted to oil?

Hi Pedro, in NSWGR’s case, it was the other way round.

When they bought the 59 class from the USA, nearly all of them were converted from oil burners to coal.

was this for purely economic reasons?
and was the class's longevity increased or decreased do you reckon?

I would imagine it was done more for convenience than anything else.

The rest of NSWGR’s steam fleet were coal burners so it just made it simpler to have all the engines using one type of fuel.

I’m not sure how many remained oil burners but I think it was only one or two. Why these were not converted seems a bit odd but the railways may have had a reason for keeping an oil burner or two around.

I’m not sure of what the effects of using oil verses coal on a steam locomotive are but I have an uncle in the USA who was a manager of an oil burning electric power station and he reckoned oil burner boilers needed more maintenance than a coal fired boiler.