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Alco "PA" Locomotives: Restoration, Specs, Engine, Rosters

Last revised: October 26, 2026

By: Adam Burns

Alco’s PA has a claim on being the best-looking diesel ever built in this country. The long nose, the raked windshields, and the smooth flank were the work of Ray Patten at General Electric, the same hand that shaped the freight FA. Railfans still argue the ranking. The railroads that had to keep the locomotives in daily passenger service made up their minds on a different question, which was whether the engine inside that nose would stay together.

The PA was built to take the passenger trains Electro-Motive had been winning since the EA of 1937, the E1 on the Santa Fe, and the E2 on the Union Pacific. A 16-cylinder model 244, rated at 2,000 horsepower in the PA-1 and 2,250 in the PA-2, rode on A1A trucks with a steam generator for the train. The turbo lagged, the stack went black when the engineer opened the throttle, and the crankshafts broke. Electro-Motive’s E units, two 567s and a parts department that showed up, took the business.

American Locomotive and General Electric built 297 of them at Schenectady from the summer of 1946 through December 1953: 169 PA-1s, 39 PB-1s, 81 PA-2s, and 8 PB-2s. The last new cabs were Southern Railway 6904 and 6905. A quarter century later the only PAs still working in the United States were four ex-Santa Fe engines on the Delaware & Hudson. In 1978 those four went to Mexico. One of them, Santa Fe 62L, came home as a shell, was finished as Nickel Plate Road 190, and on July 11, 2025 led an excursion out of Scranton. It was the first PA to run in this country since 1978.

A Rio Grande PA-PB-PA set has train 18, the eastbound "California Zephyr," at Grand Junction, Colorado, on September 13, 1956. Jackson Thode photo.

On this page: At a glance · The carbody · The 244 · Demonstrators · Who bought them · What Alco called them · Data sheets · Production roster · Delaware & Hudson · Nickel Plate 190

At a glance

The carbody

Patten’s office gave the passenger unit the same face as the FA and then stretched the body to make room for a steam generator and the water that went with it. A cab measured 65 feet 8 inches between coupler faces. A booster was two feet shorter, 63 feet 6 inches, because it had no cab. Both rode on a pair of Trimount A1A trucks, wheelbase 15 feet 6 inches, with 42-inch wheels and a 40-inch wheel offered as an option. Four General Electric traction motors did the work. The middle axle on each truck carried weight and kept the rail load down for a passenger locomotive that was expected to run fast.

Santa Fe’s lettering is the one that confuses a roster. On an A-B-A set the two cabs were L and B and the booster was A, so 51L and 51B are the cabs and 51A is the booster. The Southern Pacific and the Katy used A and C for the two cabs of a pair. The Rio Grande gave the odd numbers to the cabs and the even numbers to the boosters, which is why 6001 and 6003 are PA-1s and 6002 is the PB-1 that ran between them.

A Santa Fe PA-PB-PA set has arrived in Pasadena, California, with train 17, the westbound "Super Chief," in 1948. Russ Cole photo. American-Rails.com collection.

The gear chart offered five ratios, from 64:19 at 80 miles an hour up to 58:25 at 117. Those figures are the catalog speeds for the gearing. A PA in the warbonnet on the Super Chief, or a Rio Grande set on the California Zephyr, was bought for the 90- and 100-mile-an-hour gears. Continuous tractive effort on the PA-1, with the common 62:21 gearing, was 30,500 pounds at 20 miles an hour. The PA-2, same gearing, was rated 37,000 pounds at 19. A freight diesel on B trucks would outpull either one. That was the bargain. The idler axles were there so the locomotive could carry a passenger train, not so it could start a coal drag.

Missouri Pacific PA-2 #8018 is seen here in Kansas City in June, 1961. The MoPac was a loyal customer of the PA series, acquiring PA-1s #8001–8008 in 1949 and purchased another twenty-eight examples of the PA-2, #8009-8036 between 1950-1952. Richard Wallin photo.

The 244

Alco had come out of the war behind Electro-Motive and was told to catch up. Senior management wanted a new engine and a line of road locomotives in production before the end of 1946. The 16-cylinder 244 was on the test stand in January of that year. By June the first passenger units were out for a month of road tests on the Lehigh Valley. Catalog production is dated from September 19, 1946. The engineers had been given a year.

The 244 was a turbocharged four-stroke, and General Electric’s RD1 turbocharger fed the PA-1. Put in a 2,000-horsepower passenger locomotive and asked to accelerate a heavy train and then hold speed for hours, it showed the troubles that defined the model: turbo lag and the black smoke that went with it, exhaust manifolds that cracked, and crankshafts that failed. Photographers learned to wait for the smoke. Master mechanics learned to budget for it. John Kirkland’s builder history is the account of how Alco then tried to engineer its way out, and of how the passenger market had already moved on.

Santa Fe PA-1s, led by 69-L, at the summit of Cajon Pass with a fan trip in early 1964. Roy Gabriel photo.

Santa Fe, which owned more of the early engines than anyone, tried one other cure. In August 1954 a set was repowered with Electro-Motive 16-567C engines rated at 1,750 horsepower. The roof took on EMD fans and a blister to clear them. The conversion did not pay, and the rest of the Santa Fe fleet kept the 244 until the locomotives were sold or scrapped. The reliable Alco engine, the 251, arrived too late for the PA catalog. It reached these carbodies only in 1975, when Morrison-Knudsen put 12-cylinder 251Fs into the four Delaware & Hudson survivors.

Demonstrators

The June 1946 Lehigh Valley test is the start of the story. The numbers 9077 and 9078 belong to the end of PA-1 production. Those two, serials 75791 and 75792, were finished in December 1949. They were the last PA-1s built. Alco painted them in Canadian National green and gold, put Montreal Locomotive Works and General Electric on the nose, and sent them north to see whether a Canadian road would order the passenger cab that MLW might then have built. They ran on the Canadian National from February through May 1950. No Canadian order came. Montreal never built a PA. The Katy bought the pair and rebuilt them as PA-2s 59A and 59C. They are two of the 169 PA-1s, counted once.

Alco PA-1 1776, the "Spirit of 1776," built for the 1947 Freedom Train. The place of this photograph was not recorded. The locomotive became Gulf, Mobile & Ohio 292.

The Freedom Train cab was earlier than those two. In August 1947 Alco finished serial 74696 and numbered it 1776 for the Freedom Train, in red, white, and blue. It was a production PA-1 from the middle of the order book, not the first one. Santa Fe 51L and 51B, September 1946, were already in service, and Gulf, Mobile & Ohio 290 and 291 had been delivered at the end of 1946. When the Freedom Train was done, 1776 became GM&O 292 and joined those two.

The PA-2 had its own show pair. In March 1950 Alco sent out cab 8375 and booster 8375B in the "More Power for America" scheme, serials 75790 and 75789. Both went to the New York Central as 4212 and 4304. They sit in the PA-2 and PB-2 counts.

Who bought them

Santa Fe wrote the first production check and the biggest early one: 28 PA-1s and 16 PB-1s, September 1946 through December 1948, in the warbonnet. No other railroad bought as many of the 2,000-horsepower cabs. The New Haven’s 27 PA-1s, 0760 through 0786, were the next group, and that railroad took no boosters. The New Haven units were gone early. One of them, 0783, went to the Delaware & Hudson in February 1968 and was cut up for parts in 1972.

Santa Fe PA-1 65-L at Redondo Junction, Los Angeles, circa 1965. American-Rails.com collection.

Count every cab and the order changes. The Southern Pacific, including the Texas & New Orleans, finished with 51 cabs and 13 boosters: 24 PA-1s, 27 PA-2s, 6 PB-1s, and 7 PB-2s. The Cotton Belt’s two PA-1s, 300 and 301, were a separate railroad and are not in that 51. The Missouri Pacific took 36 cabs and no boosters, 8001 through 8036. Inside that list, 8011 and 8012 were delivered to the International-Great Northern. Santa Fe’s 28 cabs and the New Haven’s 27 follow. Nobody else is close.

The Rio Grande bought four PA-1s and two PB-1s and then stopped. They were enough for the railroad’s share of the California Zephyr and, later, for the Yampa Valley. The odd-numbered cabs and the even-numbered boosters stayed on those trains into the middle 1960s, which is why so many of the famous pictures are Rio Grande pictures. The Nickel Plate bought eleven cabs, 180 through 190, and no boosters, in late 1947 and early 1948. Every one of those eleven was scrapped. The 190 at Scranton wears the number and the Bluebird paint. It is Santa Fe 62L.

Rio Grande PA-1 6003 and an F3A with the westbound "Yampa Valley" at Winter Park, Colorado, circa 1965. American-Rails.com collection.

Rio Grande PA-1 6001 at Denver, Colorado, on July 1, 1961. Ed Fulcomer photo. American-Rails.com collection.

The other original owners were the Erie, fourteen cabs in all; the Lehigh Valley, fourteen PA-1s; the Pennsylvania, ten cabs and five boosters; the Union Pacific, eight cabs and six boosters; the New York Central system, eight PA-1s and four PB-1s plus later PA-2s, with 4204 through 4207 and 4213 and 4214 lettered for the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie; the Katy; the Wabash; the Southern, whose six PA-2s of late 1953 closed the catalog; and the Companhia Paulista in Brazil. The Paulista engines, 900 through 902, were PA-2s built to 5 feet 3 inches in October 1953. They are three of the 81. Boosters, apart from the one New York Central demonstrator, went to Santa Fe, the Rio Grande, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Southern Pacific, and the Union Pacific. The Southern Pacific was the only railroad that bought the PB-2.

What Alco called them

The specification numbers came first. A cab was a DL-304 and a booster was a DL-305, with a letter after the number as the equipment changed. Alco sold the later, 2,250-horsepower engines as further DL-304s and DL-305s. The names PA-2 and PB-2 were applied after the fact, once the parts no longer matched and the shop forces needed a way to tell the locomotives apart. Kirkland’s account is plain on the next point. Alco never cataloged a PA-3.

What railfans came to call a PA-3 was the DL-304D cab and the DL-305D booster. Those were PA-2s and PB-2s with a list of improvements: a water-cooled turbocharger in place of the air-cooled one, a new fuel-injection system aimed at the smoke, a tougher exhaust manifold, a hardened crankshaft, and General Electric’s GT586 main generator in place of the GT566D1. The same file, turned up in November 1965, twelve years after the last locomotive, shows that Alco had written specifications DL-304E and DL-305E for a PA-3 and a PB-3 if anyone still wanted a passenger cab. No one did. The sheets were never built.

Data sheets

PA-1

PB-1

PA-2

PB-2

Production roster

The four tables are the locomotives as built. A later number in the notes is the same frame. The Katy’s 59A and 59C are 9077 and 9078. New York Central 4212 and 4304 are the "More Power for America" pair. The four PA-4s are four of the Santa Fe PA-1s. Adding any of those numbers again would count an engine twice.

PA-1

169 locomotives.

PB-1

39 locomotives.

PA-2

81 locomotives, including the demonstrator and the three Paulista cabs.

PB-2

8 locomotives.

Delaware & Hudson

In December 1967 the Delaware & Hudson bought four Santa Fe PA-1s for the Laurentian and the Montreal Limited, the daytime trains between Albany and Montreal. They were Santa Fe 59L, 60L, 62L, and 54B, the last of those renumbered 66L on the Santa Fe. On the D&H they became 16, 17, 18, and 19, and they wore blue, yellow, and silver on the warbonnet outline. A fifth carbody, New Haven 0783, arrived in February 1968 and existed to be taken apart.

Amtrak ended those D&H passenger trains in 1971. The four cabs were traded in to General Electric and then taken back under president C. B. Sterzing Jr., who used them on excursions. In 1974 New York State and Amtrak put the Adirondack on the same Albany–Montreal route, and the state paid to rebuild the locomotives. Morrison-Knudsen did the work at Boise in 1975. Each engine bay lost the 16-cylinder 244 and received a 12-cylinder 251F, rated at 2,400 horsepower. Alco was gone by then. The railroad called the rebuilds PA-4s. No. 19 was released in February, 16 in May, 18 in August, and 17 in October.

Amtrak replaced them with Turboliners. After Sterzing left, the four were stored in May 1977, leased briefly to the MBTA for Boston commuter trains, and sold in 1978 to Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México. DH-19 was still in passenger work a decade later. On January 23, 1989 it stood at the Empalme shops in Sonora after a rebuild for Servicio Estrella, the Star Service FNM had launched in 1987 with sleepers, diners, and named trains that included El Tapatío, El Regiomontano, El Purépecha, El Jarocho, and El Oaxaqueño. Nos. 17 and 19 remain in Mexico. The other two came home as shells.

Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México PA-4 DH-19, built as Santa Fe 54B and later Delaware & Hudson 19, at the Empalme, Sonora shops on January 23, 1989, after its rebuild for Star Service. John Benson photo.

The full Delaware & Hudson diesel list, and the class P-20 line for these four, is on the D&H roster.

Nickel Plate 190

Santa Fe PA-1 62-L, closest to the camera, at Fort Worth, Texas, in January 1964. This cab became Delaware & Hudson 18 and, much later, Nickel Plate Road 190. Dennis E. Conniff III photo. Rick Burn collection.

Getting a PA back took longer than building one. Smithsonian curator William Withuhn spent years on a cultural exchange with Mexico. The agreement was signed in March 1999. The two damaged carbodies, little more than frames, left the old Chihuahua Pacific shops in Sonora that October and reached Albany, Oregon, in April 2000. Gulf & Ohio’s Pete Claussen, Steamtown engineer Seth Corwin, and Doyle McCormack put up the money when the museum appropriation was gone. One shell was headed for the Smithsonian and is now at the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas, where the work in hand is a cosmetic restoration as Santa Fe 59L. McCormack kept the other, Santa Fe 62L.

He told Trains in 2000 why the number had to be 190. "When I was a boy, my dad worked for the Nickel Plate, and the first diesel I ever rode on was PA 190. The Nickel Plate became my passion, and that’s why a fully functional Nickel Plate PA is going to rise again." The original 190 was long gone. What he had was an empty Santa Fe carbody. Trucks came from a Fairbanks-Morse Erie-built that had ended its days on a welded-rail train in Canada. The prime mover was started in October 2013. The outside of the locomotive was finished in time for Streamliners at Spencer in 2014, while the machinery inside was still being assembled.

On March 1, 2023 McCormack sold 190 to the Genesee Valley Transportation Company. The announcement came the next day. The locomotive moved to GVT’s Von Storch shops at Scranton, on the Delaware-Lackawanna, which still runs a fleet of Alcos and which operates a piece of the old Delaware & Hudson. Shop forces finished the electrical work. On July 11, 2025, with McCormack at the throttle, 190 took an invitation train from Scranton to Mount Pocono and back, and it did the same the next day. A Delaware & Hudson RS-3 was in the consist. It had been forty-seven years since a PA had turned a wheel in revenue or excursion service in the United States.

The locomotive is a PA-4 in the mechanical sense. The carbody, the number, and the Bluebird paint are the railroad McCormack grew up with. Both things are true, and the separate Nickel Plate 190 page follows the engine itself. Of 297 PAs and PBs, this is the one that runs. Santa Fe 59L is the other one in the United States, a shell in Texas. Two more, 17 and 19, are still in Mexico.

Related reading

• Nickel Plate Road 190 · Delaware & Hudson · D&H diesel roster
• Alco FA · Alco 251 · Nickel Plate Road
• Rio Grande · California Zephyr · Yampa Valley · Super Chief
• Southern Pacific · New Haven · Missouri Pacific · Southern Railway

Sources

• Kirkland, John F. The Diesel Builders: Volume Two, American Locomotive Company and Montreal Locomotive Works. Glendale: Interurban Press, 1989. The specification sequence, and the unbuilt DL-304E and DL-305E.
• Pinkepank, Jerry A. Diesel Spotter’s Guide. Milwaukee: Kalmbach, 1967.
• Foster, Gerald. A Field Guide to Trains. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
• Schafer, Mike. Vintage Diesel Locomotives. Osceola: MBI Publishing, 1998.
• Extra 2200 South. Builder list of road numbers, serials, and dates.
• Trains. Doyle McCormack, interviewed in 2000. The repatriation dates, and the July 11, 2025 debut.
• Railfan & Railroad, July 12, 2025, and September 16, 2025. The Scranton trips, and D&H 17 and 19 remaining in Mexico.
• Bridge Line Historical Society. Delaware & Hudson PA-1 and PA-4 roster, including the 1975 rebuild months.

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45. Lehigh Gorge Trains Move to Nesquehoning

    Nov 02, 26 11:48 PM

    
    Reading and Northern has moved Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway trips to Nesquehoning after the October 31 rockslide west of Jim Thorpe. Trains leave at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m. through Sunday, November…

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46. Texas Transit Agency Breaks Ground on TEXRail

    Nov 02, 26 11:40 PM

    
    Trinity Metro broke ground October 29, 2026, on a $270 million, 2.1-mile TEXRail extension from Fort Worth T&P Station to a new Near Southside station on land donated by Baylor Scott and White Hea…

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47. Lake Front Depot: The C&NW's Milwaukee Terminal

    Nov 02, 26 09:40 PM

    
    The Chicago and North Western Lake Front Depot at 915 East Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee. Charles Sumner Frost, 1889. Last train May 15, 1966. Clock tower down May 7, 1968.

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48. Canal Street Maintenance Plan Will Get an FRA Review

    Nov 02, 26 01:48 PM

    The Federal Railroad Administration will prepare an environmental assessment of Amtrak Canal Street maintenance plans in Chicago after adding 17 viaduct repairs to a project that had a categorical exc…

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49. Durango & Silverton Repairs Track After Continued Flooding

    Nov 02, 26 01:40 PM

    
    Durango & Silverton crews are repairing flood damage after the Animas hit 11,200 cfs on October 23. The Highline Express ran October 27 through November 1. Polar Express trains remain listed from…

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50. Middle Georgia Megasite Will Host the First Audi Plant in the U.S.

    Nov 02, 26 01:35 PM

    
    Audi will build its first U.S. plant at the Norfolk Southern-served Middle Georgia Megasite in Peach County, about $4 billion and about 4,500 jobs. Audi and Norfolk Southern publish different construc…

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