| Mattchu60 - 9/10/2024 13:48 The engine at Henry Ford is a C&O 2-6-6-6 - another big monster of an engine. Read a C&O book a few years back - the author believed that C&O misused those engines. They were made for fast freight service, instead C&O put them on coal drags. They did a fine job pulling coal trains but their true potential did not get reached like the UP did with their Big Boys.
That's a pretty fair summary. Those were nicknamed "Allegheny" class, almost comparable in power and mass to the the 4000s. But there's some really interesting engineering differences between those and the Big Boys that were specifically designed to cope with the Wasatch mountain grades. I think some of what you describe is because those C&O engines had more capacity than the number of freight or passenger cars that were deemed to be safe. |
Big Boy
