#2813
ALCO PA
🇺🇸 United States ·built by American Locomotive Company· from 1946· American locomotive class
3 photos from Wikimedia Commons · credits & licences
- 1. D&H 19 at Newtonville, April 1978 postcard: Norton Clark· Public domain
- 2. Santa Fe ALCO PA-1 1946: Jacob Lofman, PIX Incorporated, NYC, photographer· Public domain
- 3. FNM DH-19 ALCO PA maniobrando en el patio: Carlos González Torres· CC BY-SA 4.0
what is it?
The ALCO PA was a family of A1A-A1A diesel locomotives built to haul passenger trains. The locomotives were built in Schenectady, New York, in the United States, by a partnership of the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and General Electric (GE) between June, 1946 and December, 1953. Designed by General Electric's Ray Patten (along with their ALCO FA cousins), they were of a cab unit design; both cab-equipped lead A unit PA and cabless booster B unit PB models were built.
base stats
Bars compare against all trains: 600 km/h (maglev), 1,700 seats; power, weight and number built on a log scale up to 20 MW, 1,000 t and 20,000 built.
fun facts
- First built 80 years ago, in 1946.
- Top speed is 1.4× a car on the Dutch motorway (130 km/h).
- At full speed it would cover Amsterdam–Utrecht (≈ 40 km) in 13 minutes.
- 1.7 MW is about 20 family cars (~85 kW each) flat out.
- Weighs about as much as 23 African elephants (~6 t each).
- 19.8 m long: about 4 cars parked nose to tail.
multiple unit: A self-propelled train: motors are spread under the passenger cars, so no separate locomotive.
spec sheet
- built
- 1946–1953
- status
- in service
- number built
- 250
- kind
- Diesel-electric
- traction
- diesel
- origin
- 🇺🇸 United States
- builders
- American Locomotive Company, General Electric
- top speed
- 188 km/h
- power
- 1.7 MW
- gauge
- 1,435 mm standard gauge
- wheel arrangement
- A1A-A1A
- length
- 19.8 m
- weight
- 139 t
From the Wikipedia infobox and Wikidata. Blank means the sources don't say.
Sources: Wikidata Q294370, Wikipedia: ALCO PA (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-25.