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Baltimore & Ohio Pacific Locomotives Handsome Passenger Workhorse By Bob Withers
Baltimore & Ohio Pacific Locomotives Handsome Passenger Workhorse By Bob Withers
Hard cover
Copyright 2013
94 Pages
Table of Contents
Introduction
A History of B&O Pacifies
The P Class Pacifies
The P-1 Class Pacifies
The P-3 Class Pacifies
The P-4 Class Pacifies
The P-5 Class Pacifies
The P-6 Class Pacifies
The P-7 and P-9 Class Pacifies
The Inherited Pacifies
The "POTUS" Pacifies
A Pacific Album
Introduction
This is the ninth book in the TLC B&O series:
B&O Passenger Service, Vol. 1 (1993)
B&O E-Units (1994)
B&O Passenger Service, Vol. 2 (1997)
B&O Cabooses (1998)
Coal & Coke Railroad, a B&O Predecessor (2002)
B&O Steam Locomotives, The last 30 Years (2003)
B&O's Cincinnatian (2008)
B&O's EM-1 2-8-8-4 Articulated Locomotive (2007)
West Virginia Railroads, Vol. 3, B&O (2011)
This work also treats a particular type of locomotive and its use on the Baltimore & Ohio. In this case the focus is on the 4-6-2 Pacific type wheel arrangement. The B&O adopted this type in the first decade of the 20th Century, at the very outset of its popularity as a passenger-service locomotive type in the United States. By the end of the steam era the Pacific was probably the most popular of all locomotive classes
that tended to be devoted strictly to passenger service. B&O used its Pacific types, classified "P-" on the company's mechanical rosters, on the majority of its passenger trains, from short 3- to 4-car secondary runs and branch line operations to the top of the line Capitol Limited and National Limited. The Pacific is associated with every era of B&O passenger train operations from the World War I period to the end of steam.
Possessing some of the best examples of the 4-62, B&O stands as one of the type's principal users, and is studied today by steam locomotive historians and aficionados, and modelers, as some of the best. Its flashy green jacketed "Presidents" Pacifies occasioned much comment in their time. The streamlined engines designed for The Cincinnatian represent one of the better streamlined designs.
This book is by Bob Withers, a recognized B&O historian who has to his credit many books for TLC, Morning Sun, and other publishers. The book contains a detailed roster of all the B&O 4-62's, and some background about each class. The main thrust of the work, however, is in the photos presented, which are intended to represent the Pa-cifics in all types of work across the B&O system.
Thomas W Dixon Jr.
March 2013
A History of B&O Pacifics
Passenger locomotives of the 4-6-2 wheel arrangement had a little difficulty getting started. The first standard-gauge examples known to the author were three cross-compound engines built by the Rhode Island Locomotive Works for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad in 1893. CM&StP wasn't satisfied with them and returned them to the builder, which rebuilt them as simple engines and sold them to the Savannah, Florida & Western Railway. The SF&W was absorbed into the Atlantic Coast Line in 1902, and the ACL rebuilt the locomotives into 4-6-0 Ten Wheelers 10 years later.
One source says that, as early as 1888, there were a few Ten Wheelers that were rebuilt into the 4-6-2 type by adding a trailer truck, but the author has found no record of them.
The standard-gauge 4-6-2 type began in earnest with 13 Q-Class engines built by Baldwin Locomotive Works for the New Zealand Railways Department in 1901 (New Zealand had purchased a few narrow-gauge 4-6-2's in 1895) and similar power built by Brooks for Missouri Pacific and by the American Locomotive Company's Schenectady, N.Y., works for the Chesapeake & Ohio in 1902.
Builders developed the wheel arrangement after a Baldwin 2-4-2 Columbia was displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jack
son Park in 1893, which introduced the idea of adding a trailer truck to steam locomotive designs to permit larger fireboxes and grate areas than were possible with 4-4-0 Americans and 4-6-0 Ten Wheelers. Larger and wider fireboxes could not be positioned over the driving wheels but could be accommodated by adding the trailing truck. With that added set of wheels and repositioned fireboxes, boilers also could be placed lower on the mainframes. In freight service, the 2-8-2 Mikado evolved from the 2-8-0 Consolidation for the same reasons.
Two explanations have been advanced to show why the 4-6-2 came to be called "Pacific." One claims the name was coined because the first one was shipped across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. The other derives from the fact that the first such engines built for an American carrier went to the Missouri Pacific. C&O received their Pacifics in August 1902, a few weeks after MoPac took delivery of its engines, so that railroad received all the publicity in trade journals.
Ever cautious and conservative, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad waited several years to order its first 35 Pacifics, from Alco/Schenectady. Numbered 2100 to 2134, the Class P locomotives came equipped with 74-inch drivers, 22- by 28-inch cylinders, Stephenson valve gear and piston valves, and 210 pounds steam pressure. The piston valves were set at an angle to accommodate the Stephenson valve gear. The locomotives weighed 229,500 pounds and developed 32,690 pounds of tractive effort.
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