my ESPEE MODELERS ARCHIVE

California's Railroad to the U.S. 1861 - 1996

Southern Pacific ALCo C-415

SP 2400 - 2409

10 units delivered

Delivered by December 1966, and assigned to the Los Angeles Division; SP was one of only a handful of owners of these 'interesting' units.
For a fuller description and anecdotes - get a copy of the September 1984 issue of Railfan & Railroad.

The C-415 came in three cab heights, and SP opted for the tallest - some 18" taller than the standard cab height.

Most spent their time on transfer freights between Taylor yard and City of Industry yard. One was tried as the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal switcher, only to find out the tall cabs would not fit under the platform canopy's...
#2400 was known to have worked the Burbank Branch, #2404 once went to Oxnard and #2408 was photographed in Roseville.

Due to the unreliability of the ALCo 251 engine, they ended up running in pairs, hoping at least one unit would keep running to move the train.

Eventually they were assigned to Taylor yard as yard switchers, until they finally quit. Starting in 1977 they found themselves assigned to the Taylor yard dead-line.

One unit, #2401, suffered an engine failure and was returned to ALCo in August 1967. While back at ALCo, it was severely modified to correct some very major mistakes, errors and deficiency's. The cab was rearranged to provide much more room, and some electrical equipment moved to the engine compartment. Externally, the #2401 had a rearranged stack, front hood and more steps up to the cab.

Should the reliability have improved, the others would have been modified similarly - however, this was not the case, and #2401 remained subtley different to the rest of them.

Models:

• N Scale:
  • ?

• HO Scale:
  • Mehanotenika may release an upgraded model...

• all long out of production, and not very high quality
  • Mehanotenika
  • AT&T

• O Scale:
  • ?

References:

• Southern Pacific 1967-68 Motive Power Annual, page 16 - new models.
• Railroad Model Craftsman, March 1985, Page 75. - Plans and Description.
• Railroad & Railfan, September 1984, Page 45. - Southern Pacific prototype pictures and History.
• Diesel Era Vol.1 No.2 pages 29-39 - 11 pages of C-415 history and photo's of SP 2410, 2407 on page 35.