As best as I remember, it was the summer of 1965 that I was out on my little Honda motorbike searching for interesting railroad “things” to see and photograph. While riding near the engine facilities in the Illinois Central’s Mays Yard in New Orleans, I spied this ALCO RS-2 locomotive at rest, painted and lettered for the company Raymond as their number 1501. Armed with my Argus C3 35mm camera, I recorded this image of the unit while wondering who this was and where she belonged. An older railfan buddy later saw the slide, and said she had come from Africa and speculated that she was headed to a shop for overhaul.

I recently came across this photo buried in a box, and again wondered about its history, so did a bit of digging. She was built in April of 1949 and was delivered to the Lehigh & New England Railroad as their number 651. In September of 1961 she was sold to Raymond International who bought several L&NE RS-2s and many gondolas, hoppers and other rolling stock. They were sent to Liberia (in west Africa) where Raymond was building a railroad in the Nimba Mountains.

She was again sold to Whisler Equipment, c. 1966-67, and then to Precision Engineering, where she was eventually scrapped.

I mentioned above that I shot this with an Argus C3 camera. Older folks may remember that camera, which was rock solid in my experience. But it did have a few flaws. The view finder did not display the actual image you would get (it showed more than you’d get). I was disappointed that I’d cut off the nose of the machine. The camera also had a less than perfect light meter, that in my case often produced under exposed images. I was too dumb to figure out how to compensate for those discrepancies. Rats!