NASA Railroad, Florida

I came across this article about the NASA Railroad in Florida this morning, thought it was pretty interesting and wanted to share it with my fellow RAILROAD.NETers:

For nearly three decades, the NASA Railroad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida has kept the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters on track.
...
NASA uses switcher locomotives, which are brawny machines that move a lot of weight over relatively short distances. The first locomotives used by NASA were three Alco S2 locomotives obtained surplus from the U.S. Army.

Read the entire article at: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NAS ... k_999.html

Most of the Cape Canaveral AFS railway system referred to in the article closed over five years ago. Two of the three EMD SW8 locomotives went to Hill AFB in Ogden, UT, while the third SW8, still at the Titan complex, was put on display at the Air Force Space Museum at the AFS. According to a public affairs official at the time, "The track will be removed from the area around Complex 40 and Complex 41, but will still run to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to support Navy operations."

I believe Alco diesel engines are the "prime movers" inside the crawler, or whatever is the proper name of the vehicle that is used to transport the space shuttle from/to its storage building/launch pad.

Regarding the Alcos, this is what I received from NASA public affairs in January 2006:

"As a matter of interest, for the NASA Alco RS-1 locomotives, one went to the Great River Railroad in Rosedale, Miss., another went to the Port of New Orleans, and the third went to the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Miami.

"The NASA Railroad continues to operate with three SW-1500 locomotives, which were acquired from the Toledo, Peoria & Western."

The three SW8s were USAF (ex-USA) 2000, 2007, and 2021. USAF 2021 now sits on display at the AF Space Museum, and the other two went to Hill AFB, UT.

He wasn't talking about locomotives; the reference was to the pair of crawler-transporters used to move the assembled spacecraft from the VAB to the launch pads.

Each is powered by a pair of Alco 2750 hp prime movers (presumably 251's). Some info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter

Very interesting! Those are Alcos I'd never heard of before.