C&O 2021 Steam Calendar - H-8 2-6-6-6 Steam Locomotives - a Retrospective
C&O's fabulous H-8 2-6-6-6 Alleghany Type is featured this year. It is arguably the most famous, most talked-about, most written-about, and most photographed locomotive in C&O's history.
The photos were selected not only for their drama, but to illustrate how the H-8s worked for a little over a decade to close out the great era of steam locomotive power on the C&O and in America.
Each month features an action photo of an H-8 at work starting at Clifton Forge, Va., and working west to Greggs, Ohio. It was in this territory where these 60 titanic engines made their mark. They hauled coal for C&O both east and west to fuel the wartime and postwar industries and they made a valiant, but doomed, stand against diesels.
Today the H-8s are recognized as the best of the best in reciprocating steam locomotives. Though argument/discussion still swirls around their comparison to other giants of steam such as UP's Big Boy, DM&IR's Yellowstone, and N&W's A-class, they stand alone as "Lima's Finest." They were, indeed, the ultimate Super Power engine and how a steam engine of the 1960s-70s just might have looked.
