In the
Whyte notationThe Whyte notation for classifying steam locomotives by wheel arrangement was devised by Frederick Methvan Whyte and came into use in the early twentieth century encouraged by an editorial in American Engineer and Railroad Journal...
a
4-4-2 is a
steam locomotiveA steam locomotive is a locomotive powered by steam. The term usually refers to its use on railways, but can also refer to a "road locomotive" such as a traction engine or steamroller....
that has a two-axle leading truck, two powered driving axles and a one-axle trailing truck. This locomotive
wheel arrangementIn rail transport a wheel arrangement is a system of classifying the arrangement of the wheel assemblies of a locomotive by type, position, and connections. There are serveral notations used to describe wheel arrangements, the use of which varies by country...
is commonly called an
Atlantic type.
Other equivalent classifications are:
UIC classificationThe UIC classification of locomotive axle arrangements describes the wheel arrangement of locomotives, multiple units and trams. It is set out in the International Union of Railways "Leaflet 650 - Standard designation of axle arrangement on locomotives and multiple-unit sets". It is used in much...
:
2B1 (also known as German classification and Italian classification)
French classification:
221
Turkish classificationIn the Turkish classification system for railway locomotives, the number of powered axles are followed by the total number of axles. It is identical to the Swiss system except that the latter places a slash between the two numbers.Thus0-6-0 becomes 33...
:
25
Swiss classification:
2/5
History
Atlantics were built expressly for passenger service in the evolvement from the unstable mainline express 2-4-2. A number of railroads had moderate fleets of 4-4-2s for use in express, local and commute service. One of the best-known groups of 4-4-2s (among such as the Milwaukee Road
Hiawatha engines) in the United States was the
Pennsylvania RailroadThe Pennsylvania Railroad was an American railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the "Pennsy", the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
's vast fleet of E class Atlantics culminating in the
E6sClass E6 on the Pennsylvania Railroad was the final type of 4-4-2 "Atlantic" locomotive built by the railroad, and second only to the Milwaukee Road's streamlined class A in size, speed and power. Although quickly ceding the crack trains to the larger K4s Pacifics, the E6 remained a popular...
class. In the United Kingdom one of the best-known series was the '
Great NorthernThe Great Northern Railway was a British railway company established by the London & York Railway Act of 1846.The main line ran from London via Hitchin, Peterborough, and Grantham, to York, with a loop line from Peterborough to Bawtry via Boston and Lincoln, and branch lines to Sheffield and...
Atlantic' fleet, incorporated into the fleet of the
London and North Eastern RailwayThe London and North Eastern Railway was the second-largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain...
at the inter-war
groupingThe Railways Act of 1921, also known as the Grouping Act, was an enactment by the British government of David Lloyd George intended to stem the losses being made by many of the country's 120 railway companies, move the railways away from internal competition, and to retain some of the benefits...
of companies.
The original Atlantics were built with hauling wood-frame passenger cars in mind, and came in a variety of configurations, including the four-cylinder Vauclain Compound which had previously been used on express 4-4-0s, 4-6-0s and 2-4-2s. Around the 1910s though, American railroads started buying steel passenger cars, which precipitated the introduction of the
4-6-2Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, a 4-6-2 locomotive has four leading wheels , six coupled driving wheels and two trailing wheels . These locomotives are also known as Pacifics...
Pacific type as the standard passenger engine, which had previously been a mountain engine. Nonetheless, The
Chicago and North WesternThe Chicago and North Western Transportation Company was a Class I railroad in the Midwest United States. It was also known as the North Western. The railroad operated more than of track as of the turn of the 20th century, and over of track in seven states before retrenchment in the late 1970s...
,
Southern PacificThe Southern Pacific Transportation Company , earlier Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Company , and usually simply called the Southern Pacific, was an American railroad. The railroad was founded as a land holding company in 1865, later acquiring the Central Pacific Railroad by lease...
, Pennsylvania Railroad, and the
Santa FeThe Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often abbreviated as Santa Fe, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The company was first chartered in February 1859...
railways used 4-4-2s until the bitter end of steam locomotive fleets in the 1950s, some even being carefully used in light local freight switching service.
For modern use, Atlantics were ill-suited for mountain or for very-long-distance operations. 4-4-2s had high-diameter
driving wheelOn a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotive's pistons...
s; in some cases exceeding 6 feet (1.8 m) which were adequate for 70 to 100
mphThe mile per hour is a unit of speed, measured in Imperial units expressing the number of international miles covered per hour.It is currently the unit used for speed limits, and speeds, on roads in the United Kingdom and United States...
(113 to 161 km/h) trains, although they tended to "chop" on higher speeds. Climbing any railroad grade required a lower drive wheel diameter for adhesion or more drive wheels for traction, although prior to world war one, they were used as mountain helpers.
For these reasons, engines (not just Atlantics) intended for fast, light trains tended to have shorter lives. Still, some Atlantics fought the odds to survive into later eras. In India, the broad gauge E class were rebuilt in the 1940s and survived into the 1970s. By the 1980s, the last Atlantics at work in the world were a few Cape gauge examples in Mozambique. These survived reported retirements to operate into the beginning of the 21st century, becoming some of the last if not the very last working steam in the country. Exceptionally, they had outlasted much larger and newer power including Garratts.
Hiawatha service
The Milwaukee Road used the Atlantic type on its midwestern
HiawathaThe Hiawathas were named passenger trains operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad , and traveled from Chicago to the Twin Cities in Minnesota. The original train takes its name from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow...
passenger trains; four (4-4-2) locomotives of
class AThe Milwaukee Road class A comprised four high-speed, streamlined 4-4-2 "Atlantic" type steam locomotives built by ALCO in 1935-37 to haul the Milwaukee Road’s Hiawatha express passenger trains. They were among the last Atlantic types built in the United States, and certainly the largest and most...
were constructed in 1935. Reid wrote these 4-4-2s were 'the first steam locomotives ever designed and built to reach every day.' The engines developed of
tractive effortThe tractive force is the pulling force exerted by a vehicle, or machine or body.Tractive effort is a synonym of tractive force, used in railway engineering terminology when describing the pulling power of a locomotive....
. An unusual feature of this locomotive, was the drive onto the front coupled axle, which 'improved riding qualities.' The railroad's Atlantics, in their distinctive streamline shrouds, were designed by industrial designer
Otto KuhlerOtto Kuhler was an American designer, one of the best known industrial designers of the American railroads. According to Trains magazine he streamstyled more locomotives and railroad cars than Cret, Dreyfuss and Loewy combined...
. All of the locomotives were eventually withdrawn between 1949–1951, then scrapped and none survive.
Swengel wrote the engines were 'beautifully cross balanced' and ran on drivers, had an oil fired grate and a boiler pressure of 300 psi, which gave the boiler a high capacity relative to the cylinders. They were designed, said Swengel, for a light-weight train of 5-6 cars. They were, he claimed, 'probably the fastest steam locomotives ever built in America, and possibly were capable of matching any locomotive in the World.' The fleet ran their schedule in 400 minutes, with several stops en route, averaging in parts over and often stopped with 'one or two minutes to spare'.
Survivors
As a result of these engines being superseded by more modern steam traction, few have survived.
In the UK
- Great Northern Railway
The Great Northern Railway was a British railway company established by the London & York Railway Act of 1846.The main line ran from London via Hitchin, Peterborough, and Grantham, to York, with a loop line from Peterborough to Bawtry via Boston and Lincoln, and branch lines to Sheffield and...
, 990, Henry Oakley. National CollectionThe National Railway Museum is a museum in York forming part of the British National Museum of Science and Industry and telling the story of rail transport in Britain and its impact on society. It has won many awards, including the European Museum of the Year Award in 2001...
. Now static at Bressingham Steam & GardensBressingham Steam & Gardens is a steam museum, gardens and garden centre located at Bressingham, west of Diss in Norfolk, England. The site has several narrow gauge rail lines and a number of types of steam engines and vehicles in its collection and is also the home of the national Dads Army...
.
- Great Northern Railway, 251. National Collection. First large-boilered Great Northern Railway Atlantic type C1.
- The Bluebell Railway
The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for nine miles along the border between East Sussex and West Sussex, England. Steam trains are operated between and , with an intermediate station at .The railway is managed and run largely by volunteers...
is building a replica of a LB&SCRThe London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at its apex, practically the whole coastline of Sussex as its base, and a large part of Surrey...
Atlantic, similar to the GNR large boilered Atlantics.
- The Great Western Society is working on a replica of a 4-6-0 'Saint' class locomotive. Some of these ran as Atlantics for comparative purposes and the replica will run as an Atlantic from time to time.
In the USA
- Southern Pacific, 3025. Travel Town Museum
The Travel Town Museum is a transport museum in Los Angeles, California.Travel Town was dedicated on December 14, 1952. The museum is open daily, except Christmas and has free admission....
, Los Angeles, CA.
- Chicago & North Western, 1015. Museum of Transportation
The Museum of Transportation of the St. Louis County, Missouri, Parks Department is a museum located in the Greater St. Louis area. It was first founded in 1944 by a group of individuals dedicated to preserving the past and has a wide variety of vehicles from American history...
, St. Louis, MO.
- Pennsylvania Railroad E6s 460. Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania
The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is a railroad museum in Strasburg, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.The museum is located on the east side of Strasburg along Pennsylvania Route 741...
, Strasburg, PA.
- Pennsylvania Railroad, 7002 (formerly 8063) Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, Strasburg, PA. Has steamed since preservation, now static.