1941: The C&O Railway Acquires the First Unit of a Record-Setting “Leviathan Fleet” of Locomotives  

December 9, 1941

Officials at the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railway accepted the first of t0 large 2-6-6-6 Allegheny steam locomotives from the longtime Ohio-based manufacturer Lima Locomotive Works. This locomotive type’s numbers are due to the fact that it had two leading wheels, two sets of six driving wheels, and six training wheels. The “Allegheny” in the name was a reference to the C&O locomotives’ regular job of hauling coal trains over the Allegheny Mountains, where this new type of locomotive would likewise end up being used. 

Guy T. Rockwell, financial editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, reported on the C&O’s arrangements for acquiring the 2-6-6-6 locomotives. “These locomotives, costing $250,000 apiece, are the largest and most powerful ever designed for use on the C.& O.,” stated Rockwell. “The nine uncompleted units of this Leviathan fleet of the rails are in various stages of completion.” Rockwell further noted, “A spokesman for the carrier said commissioning of these locomotives is part of the C. & O.’s program for peak efficiency of operations, keeping pace with increased industrial and defense demands for transportation.”

A total of 60 Alleghenies would be built for the C&O through 1948. These locomotives, collectively categorized as Chesapeake and Ohio class H-8, were generally deployed for hauling coal, but a few of them were pressed into service on occasion to pull trains carrying either military troops during World War II or unusually heavy loads of mail.

In addition, Lima Locomotive Works manufactured another class of 2-6-6-6 locomotives — known as the “Blue Ridge” locomotives — for the Virginian Railway. Eight of those locomotives were built in 1945. Both of those classes of the 2-6-6-6 type are widely considered to be the largest steam locomotives ever built for service in the United States. There are only two Alleghenies still in existence today; one of these (shown in the accompanying photo taken in 2022) can be found in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, while the other resides at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

Photo Credit: Fan Railer (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

For more information on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway’s 2-6-6-6 Allegheny steam locomotives (class H-8), please check out https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-resources/popular-topics/allegheny-locomotive and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_and_Ohio_class_H-8