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Lot Essay
Until the early 1920s, locomotives had depended on size more than engineering to produce power. In 1925, with power-at-speed as its objective, Lima Locomotive Works introduced the 2-8-4, a locomotive with an enlarged firebox that needed two trailing-truck axles for support. The C&O was so impressed with Limas Super Power concept that it ordered forty (40) 2-10-4s and then, in 1941, ten (10) 2-6-6-6s. From 1941 through 1948, C&O received a total of sixty class H-8 Alleghenies in five production orders. It put them to work hauling 11,500-ton coal trains up the 57 percent ruling grade of the 80-mile Allegheny Subdivision between Hinton, West Virginia and Clifton Forge, Virginia. The Alleghenies were adaptable, easily capable of hauling heavy wartime troop trains over the mountains at passenger train speeds, and later, of hauling even heavier coal trains across the Ohio flatlands. Neighboring Virginian purchased eight more as its class AG, and used them to haul long coal trains to tidewater.
The Alleghenies were distinctive in many other ways. They had, by far, the highest axle loading (over 86,000 lbs.) and generated the most power of any steam locomotive ever built (no. 1608 once recorded 7,498 drawbar horsepower pulling a 160-car train weighing 14,075 tons). Yet despite their huge boiler diameter (109 inches) and height (16'7" at the stack for the post-war locomotives), they were so well proportioned and compact that they appear smaller in photographs.
The Alleghenies end came slowly. Storage of H-8s began in 1952 when some were only four (4) years old, and scrapping started in 1954. But twelve (12) H-8s, no. 1600 among them, were put back in service beginning in July 1955, when coal export shipments increased so rapidly that the C&O was caught short of motive power. Exactly a year later, on July 27, 1956, the last fires were permanently dropped on 1647 and 1653. Only two (2), numbers 1601 in Dearborn, Michigan and 1604 in Baltimore, were preserved.
The Alleghenies were distinctive in many other ways. They had, by far, the highest axle loading (over 86,000 lbs.) and generated the most power of any steam locomotive ever built (no. 1608 once recorded 7,498 drawbar horsepower pulling a 160-car train weighing 14,075 tons). Yet despite their huge boiler diameter (109 inches) and height (16'7" at the stack for the post-war locomotives), they were so well proportioned and compact that they appear smaller in photographs.
The Alleghenies end came slowly. Storage of H-8s began in 1952 when some were only four (4) years old, and scrapping started in 1954. But twelve (12) H-8s, no. 1600 among them, were put back in service beginning in July 1955, when coal export shipments increased so rapidly that the C&O was caught short of motive power. Exactly a year later, on July 27, 1956, the last fires were permanently dropped on 1647 and 1653. Only two (2), numbers 1601 in Dearborn, Michigan and 1604 in Baltimore, were preserved.