If you've read my section on my locomotive roster, you know of my deep affinity for Alco diesels, especially the Century series, and especially the giant six axle beasts in that series - the C628, C630 and C636. The Lehigh Valley famously rostered quite a few of these, and the Pennsylvania, Penn Central and Reading were certainly willing to buy Alco power in the late 60's and early 70's. The Delaware and Hudson (which is also featured on my layout) were also strong proponents (at least in the early 1970's of the ahead-of-its-time six-axle C628. So, I like them, and you could see quite a few of the giants in the Lehigh Valley gorge.
I have a total of 5 (4 of them are C628's) and love their look. All of them are Stewart Hobbies models (since taken over by Bowser), and the detail is nice and they are quite dependable units. The new Bowser production (both with and without sound cards) of these is really nice, but you can pick up used Stewart models for about half the price of a Bowser on ebay (typically between 70 and 100 dollars). I've even bought two undecorated kits - finished them as Penn Central and D&H units complete with decals and paint.
The real locomotives did have a tendency to derail, and the models also can exhibit this tendency. I have a theory for this - the design of the three axles gear assemblies spreads out the interior axle further from the other two - it's long and asymmetric, and this asymmetry, especially over uneven turning sections of track lead to the gear assemblies coming into contact with the fuel tank and snagging.
Because of the snags, the locomotive won't turn correctly and you end up with a derailment. The snags aren't very significant - it just takes a little interference to generate a derailment, and I couldn't figure out this aggravating condition for quite a few years. In some cases I just didn't run some of these locomotives - I was spending more time putting them back on the track versus running trains. I looked to the internet - surely someone else had this issue! However, after extensive searching, I couldn't find anyone else with the same problem.
The solution that I came up with is to file the back sides of the wheel frames that come closest to contacting the fuel tank and cast frame above the wheel sets.
It doesn't take too much filing to make a huge difference, and I've now completed this modification on at least 3 of my 5 locomotives in this series. Thought I'd pass along that piece of knowledge in case you're running into the same problem. It's an easy fix that doesn't even really require removing the wheel sets from the locomotive - you just turn out the wheel sets and work on them with a needle file.
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