This picture was sent to me by Mike Guss, his friend Mr. Durfee posted this shot on the Railpix website...Mike has a shot of every C&NW Diesel unit they ever owned.

C&NW was big on Alcos at one time..When I worked in South Dakota in the '70's and early '80's they had two sets of these Alcos with a "slug" in the middle. They were assigned between Huron, SD and Winona, MN on trains 482 and 495.

The slug just had traction motors, no engine. They bled electricity off of one unit to run the front truck on the slug and the other one to run the back truck.

They were numbered 401-404 and all had the rubber seal gone between the carbody and cab so one got to listen to metal scraping on metal all day. Then add the noise, vibration, and smoke belching abilities. They were a real piece of work.

My thanks to Mike for bringing back some really bad memories.

Happy Holidays to All,

Mark & Lynn