Steam Trains and Engines

The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway traverses the largest bituminous coalfield in the world, and each year transports fifty to sixty million tons of coal. Much of this vast coal traffic is over mountainous terrain and often on single track, which in the Allegheny mountains reaches the maximum track occupation of any American railroad.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find the C. & O. operating an abundance of massive motive power; 160-car trains up to a mile and a half in length and weighing 12,000 tons are commonplace, and in steam days larger and larger locomotives were built, culminating in 1941 in the immense ' H8 ' class articulated machines with a wheel arrangement of 2-6-6-6, the only main-line locomotives ever to employ 6-wheel trailing trucks. Turned out by the Lima Locomotive Work*, forty-five in 1941 and a further ifteen in 1949, the ' H8s ' had four 22 in.* 33 in. cylinders, 5 ft. 7 in. driving wheels and a tractive effort of over 110,000 Ib. Eight identical engines were built for the Virginian Railway, capable of handling 12,000-ton trains at 45 m.p.h. and achieving power outputs of more than 8,000 h.p.

Numbered 1600 to 1659, the ' H8s ' spent their brief lives heading vast freight trains through the Alleghenies. like No. 1622 here seen blasting through Alderson in West Virginia Despite the unlimited supply of cheap coal, diesel power began to replace steam in the early 1950s, and soon the last of the ' H8s,' in some cases after a working life of only 5 years, were withdrawn for scrapping.