The biggest engines east of the Mississippi were not rostered by the biggest railroads. There were no legendary articulateds racing along the NYC's Water Level Route or charging over the Pennsy's Horseshoe Curve. It was the smaller, scrappier eastern roads dedicated to wrestling coal out of Appalachia - the C&O, N&W, Virginian, Clinchfield, Western Maryland - that owned articulateds rivaling anything in the West. And the king of them all was the Chesapeake & Ohio's Class H-8 Allegheny.

With four fewer drivers than a Union Pacific Big Boy, an Allegheny could deliver nearly a thousand more horsepower to the rails. Its massive firebox was big enough to host a board meeting - so big it required a unique 6-wheel trailing truck to support it. Its drivers carried the highest axle load of any steam engine, ever. To make the Allegheny fit the C&O's existing 115-foot turntables, its tender was made taller at the rear, to accommodate 25 tons of coal and 25,000 gallons of water. This required a unique 4-wheel rear truck on the tender.

The Allegheny was the brainchild of Lima Locomotive Works, where the superpower steam concept had been invented in the 1920s. Like the Big Boy, it was designed to lift monstrous loads over one specific piece of railroad: the 80 miles between Hinton, West Virginia and Clifton Forge, Virginia, a coal route from the mines over the summit of the Allegheny Mountains toward tidewater ports. The engine took its name from the mountain range it traversed. Delivery of the iniital order of 10 locomotives began just days after Pearl Harbor and a few months after the first Big Boy; the C&O was so pleased with the giant engines that it ordered 50 more over the next seven years. Fellow coal hauler Virginian took delivery of eight copies in early 1945, naming them Class AG Blue Ridge types.

Typical service on the C&O was lifting 140 loaded hoppers out of Hinton with one H-8 on the point, and another pushing at the rear and cutting off after the mountain summit was reached. Later in their careers, some H-8s were assigned to flatter territory in Ohio and Kentucky, where a single Allegheny could walk away with a 160-car freight.

Our die-cast Imperial Series model replicates all the features that made the prototype Allegheny as powerful visually as it was physically: high pilot deck for access to its smokebox-mounted air pumps; huge twin sandboxes located fore and aft of the steam dome; massive steam delivery pipes for both front and rear engines; torpedo-like air tanks ahead of the cab; and more. Like all M.T.H. articulateds, our Allegheny also features puffing smoke and authentic articulated chuff sounds, with the front and rear engines going in and out of sync.

 

Features:

 

Intricately Detailed, Die-Cast Boiler and Chassis

Intricately Detailed, Die-Cast Tender Body

Stamped Metal Chassis

Authentic Paint Scheme

Real Tender Coal Load

Die-Cast Locomotive Trucks

Handpainted Engineer and Fireman Figures

Painted Cab Backhead Gauges

Legible Builders Plates

Tender Truck Chains

Metal Handrails, Whiste and Bell

Metal Wheels and Axles

Remote-Controlled Proto-Coupler

Prototypical Rule 17 Lighting

Constant Voltage LED Headlight

Operating LED Firebox Glow

Operating LED Marker Lights

Operating Tender LED Back-up Light

(2) Powerful 5-Pole Precision Flywheel-Equipped Motors

Synchronized Puffing ProtoSmoke System

Locomotive Speed Control In Scale MPH Increments

Wireless Drawbar

Onboard DCC/DCS Decoder

Proto-Sound 3.0 With The Digital Command System Featuring Freight Yard Proto-Effects

Unit Measures: 27 3/8" x 2 5/8" x 3 5/16"

Operates On O-31 Curves

 

 

Steam DCC Features:

 

F0 Head/Tail light

F1 Bell

F2 Horn

F3 Start-up/Shut-down

F4 PFA

F5 Lights (except head/tail)

F6 Master Volume

F7 Front Coupler

F8 Rear Coupler

F9 Forward Signal

F10 Reverse Signal

F11 Grade Crossing

F12 Smoke On/Off

F13 Smoke Volume

F14 Idle Sequence 3

F15 Idle Sequence 2

F16 Idle Sequence 1

F17 Extended Start-up

F18 Extended Shut-down

F19 Labor Chuff

F20 Drift Chuff

F21 One Shot Doppler

F22 Coupler Slack

F23 Coupler Close

F24 Single Horn Blast

F25 Engine Sounds

F26 Brake Sounds

F27 Cab Chatter

F28 Feature Reset