The biggest engines east of the Mississippi were not rostered by the biggest railroads. There were no legendary articulateds racing along the NYC’s Water Level Route or charging over the Pennsy’s Horseshoe Curve. It was the smaller, scrappier eastern roads dedicated to wrestling coal out of Appalachia — the C&O, N&W, Virginian, Clinchfield, Western Maryland — that owned articulateds rivaling anything in the West. And the king of them all was the Chesapeake & Ohio’s Class H-8 Allegheny.

With four fewer drivers than a Union Pacific Big Boy, an Allegheny could deliver nearly a thousand more horsepower to the rails. Its massive firebox was big enough to host a board meeting — so big it required a unique 6-wheel trailing truck to support it. Its drivers carried the highest axle load of any steam engine, ever. To make the Allegheny fit the C&O’s existing 115-foot turntables, its tender was made taller at the rear, to accommodate 25 tons of coal and 25,000 gallons of water. This required a unique 4-wheel rear truck on the tender.

The Allegheny was the brainchild of Lima Locomotive Works, where the superpower steam concept had been invented in the 1920s. Like the Big Boy, it was designed to lift monstrous loads over one specific piece of railroad: the 80 miles between Hinton, West Virginia and Clifton Forge, Virginia, a coal route from the mines over the summit of the Allegheny Mountains toward tidewater ports. The engine took its name from the mountain range it traversed. Delivery of the iniital order of 10 locomotives began just days after Pearl Harbor and a few months after the first Big Boy; the C&O was so pleased with the giant engines that it ordered 50 more over the next seven years. Fellow coal hauler Virginian took delivery of eight copies in early 1945, naming them Class AG Blue Ridge types.

2018 Vol. 1 Catalog

Click HERE to see it online.

Click HERE To Get Quick Access To All Things M.T.H. With The New Smart Phone App

Click here to unsubscribe.