Under the Whyte notation, a 2-8-4 is a steam locomotive that has two unpowered leading wheels, followed by eight coupled and powered driving wheels, and four trailing wheels. This locomotive type is most often referred to as a Berkshire, though the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway used the name Kanawha for their 2-8-4s. In Europe, this wheel arrangement was mostly seen in mainline passenger express locomotives and, in certain countries, in tank locomotives.
Overview In the United States of America, the 2-8-4 wheel arrangement was a further development of the enormously successful 2-8-2 Mikado. It resulted from the requirement for a freight locomotive with even greater steam heating capacity. To produce more steam, a solution was to increase the size of the locomotive's firebox, though the 2-8-2 wheel arrangement, with its single axle trailing truck, limited the permissible increased axle loading from a larger firebox. The most practical solution was to add a second trailing axle to spread the increased weight of a larger firebox.
The first American 2-8-4s were built for the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1925 by Lima Locomotive Works. The railroad's route across the Berkshire mountains was a substantial test for the new locomotives and, as a result, the name Berkshire was adopted for the locomotive type.
In Europe, 2-8-4 tender locomotives were designed mainly for passenger express trains, but they also hauled long-distance express freights to increase utilisation. European 2-8-4 tank locomotives were a logical transition from the 2-8-2T locomotive types, allowing larger fireboxes and larger coal bunkers. They were mainly used for busy suburban services in heavily populated suburban areas of big cities, but infrequently also for sparsely populated rural areas or long-distance lines.
Usage
Australia
The Western Australian K-class was a class of 2-8-4T steam locomotives of the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR). Between 1893 and 1898, the WAGR took delivery of 24 of these locomotives from Neilson and Company. They entered service on the Eastern Railway between Midland Junction and Northam. In 1900, during the Second Boer War, the Imperial Military Railways experienced a shortage of locomotives and six more new K class locomotives destined for the WAGR were diverted to South Africa, where they were known as the Western Australians.
The South Australian Railways also operated 2-8-4s. Fleet construction commenced in 1930 and by the end of 1943, seventeen locomotives were in service on the gauge system. The design of these locomotives was based on American practices. After they were withdrawn from service by 1958, they were all scrapped and did not survive into preservation.
Austria The heavy Class 214 1’D2′ (2–8–4) two-cylinder simple expansion express passenger locomotive was developed in Austria in 1927. It was designed by engineers of the Floridsdorf Werke and was the largest Austrian steam locomotive and the most powerful Berkshire type to run in Europe. Designed for the West railway express train service, they were to be used to haul 580-ton express trains from Wien Westbahnhof in Vienna over to Salzburg. This mainline has three approximately banks with gradients between 1 in 91 and 1 in 125.
Two prototypes were built, a two-cylinder and three-cylinder version. When tested, the two-cylinder version proved to be superior to the three-cylinder Class 114 version, and eventually twelve more two-cylinder Class 214 locomotives were built. In 1936, No. 214.13 reached a speed of , the highest speed ever attained by an Austrian steam locomotive. The regular speed limit was .
From 1938, the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB) designated the locomotive class 12.0. In the mid-1939, they hauled 600 tons express trains out of Vienna over Wienerwald at a speed of , reaching over level stretches.
In 1945, seven of these locomotives were taken over by the Soviet Military Administration when they occupied the Russian Zone in Austria. These locomotives had "T" (Trofya) painted before their running numbers and were marked "CCCP". The Russians did not transfer these locomotives out of Austria and, when they withdrew their occupying forces in September 1955, the locomotives were returned to the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB).
When the mainline west of Vienna was electrified, all the ÖBB 1’D2’ locomotives were taken out of service and written off. On 15 February 1962, locomotive No. 12.10, built by Floridsdorf in 1936, was preserved as museum locomotive at the Eisenbahnmuseum Strasshof.
Brazil Beyer Peacock delivered four 2-8-4T locomotives to Minas & Rio Railway (gauge 1000mm) in 1890, and one more in 1894.
The French state-owned sales consortium Groupement d´Exportation de Locomotives en Sud-Amérique (GELSA) delivered 66 ultra-modern 2-8-4 two-cylinder simple expansion locomotives for the Brazilian Railways in 1951 and 1952. They were built by Société Francaise de Construction Mécaniques (Cail), Société des Forges et Ateliers de Creusot (Schneider of Le Creusot) and Compagnie de Fives-Lille. All were delivered to Brazil by the end of 1952.
Designed under the direction of engineer André Chapelon, this class demonstrated that large and powerful steam locomotives could run in general use on light rails of with low speed limits. Their maximum axle load had been reduced to 10 tons, all were fitted with double Kylchap exhaust systems and their leading and trailing trucks had Athermos axle boxes. Three tender types could be coupled to them, one heavy and two light, for work in different areas. The heavy tender had six-wheel bogies, a coal capacity of 12 tons and a water capacity of . The light coal tender had four-wheel bogies, a coal capacity of 7 tons and a water capacity of . The light wood tender had four-wheel bogies, a firewood capacity of and a water capacity of .
These modern locomotives were regarded with suspicion by some enginemen who were used to obsolete British locomotives which were often over forty years old. In addition, diesel locomotive salesmen claimed that steam traction was obsolete. This attitude spread to middle management staff, with the result that these modern French steam locomotives were replaced in the 1960s, when they were hardly run in. Some of those locomotives which worked in Southern Brazil were leased to the Bolivian Railways in the 1960s. By 2004, some still existed as wrecks in a locomotive dump near Santa Cruz in Bolivia.
Bulgaria As part of their modernising and standardisation program, the Bulgarian State Railways (BDZ) ordered twenty superheated three-cylinder (1’D2’-h3) locomotives from Krupp in 1941. The industrial disruption of the Second World War, however, overloaded the German locomotive builders with domestic production demands and Krupp was only able to produce ten of these new BDZ Class 36 tank locomotives in 1943, works numbers 2272 to 2281.
The new 109.9 ton Class 36 locomotives were intended to replace the older 2-8-0 (1D-h2) locomotives on local passenger train services. The axle loading was kept below 16 tons and their large coal and water capacities made the new class suitable for a wider range of duties, if required. Small smoke deflectors were fitted to the top of the smokebox.
When the new locomotives arrived in Bulgaria in 1943, they were allocated to Sofia depot. Between 1953 and 1957, five locomotives were relocated to Plovdiv depot to serve the Plovdiv-Svilengrad line. In addition to the local passenger train service, duties there also included international express trains to and from Turkey. In 1961, the remaining five locomotives were relocated from Sofia to Varna depot. They remained on these local passenger train duties well into the 1970s, when they were ousted by diesel locomotives and diesel trainsets. Some were preserved.
Canada The Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway (TH&B) was the only Canadian railway to operate 2-8-4 Berkshires. Only two locomotives were ordered from the Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW) in 1927, works numbers 67573 and 67574. They were the last new steam locomotives to be ordered by the TH&B and were allocated road numbers 201 and 202. They were fitted with Coffin feedwater heaters and duplex stokers, and had a working order weight of 128 tons.
After being equipped with Automatic Train Control (ATC) in 1929, they were the only TH&B freight locomotives which were allowed to run on New York Central’s tracks, on the Welland-Buffalo line. Due to dieselisation, both were withdrawn from service in June 1953. Both locomotives 201 and 202 were scrapped in late 1953 and did not survive into preservation.
Czechoslovakia
Tank locomotives The Czechoslovak State Railways (CSD) was one of the largest tank locomotive users in Europe. The dense railway network in Bohemia and Moravia provided the ideal environment for local short-distance passenger train workings powered by numerous classes of tank locomotives. On 31 December 1937, the CSD had no less than 1,250 tank locomotives on its roster, of which 385 were eight-coupled tank locomotives.
The first Czechoslovak 1’D2’t-h2 (2–8–4) tank locomotive was derived from the CSD Class 455.1 1’D-h2 (2–8–0) tender locomotive, with water tanks, a coal bunker and a trailing bogie added. Apart from changing the drive from the second to the third coupled axle and increasing the superheating surface of the boiler, these handsome tank locomotives were mechanically identical to the tender locomotives. They were originally intended to be used on the Prague to České Budějovice (Böhmisch Budweis) line and on branch lines diverting from the mainline for local train service. At the time, however, the 16 ton axle load proved to be too high for most of the lines where they were intended to run and for this reason only 27 locomotives were built between 1928 and 1932.
The first thirteen were initially designated Class 446.0, but an increase in their permitted maximum speed to led to the locomotive's reclassification to Class 456.0, numbered 456.001 to 027. These were powerful tank locomotives, nicknamed Krasin after the explorer General Nobile who reached the North Pole in 1928. When tested while hauling a 900-ton train, one reached a maximum speed of at level and an average speed of while climbing a 1 in 100 gradient.
Between 1938 and 1945, all of them remained on the Böhmisch-Mährisch Bahn (BMB) and Protektorátni Drahy Cech a Moravy (CMD) lines in Bohemia and Moravia, and all 27 survived the Second World War. By the early 1960s, the Class 456.0 locomotives were spread thinly over most of the country, having been allocated to locations from Plzeň in western Bohemia to Banská Bystrica in Slovakia. All were withdrawn from service between 1968 and 1972. One, no. 456.011, went into industrial service and three others, numbers 456.015, 024 and 026, were later used as mobile boilers. The remainder were scrapped.
Tender locomotives The CSD ordered three Class 486.1 1’D2’-h3 (2–8–4) locomotives, based on the three-cylinder Class 114 locomotive of the Austrian Federal Railways (BBÖ). This hand-fired locomotive had a Krauss-Helmholtz leading truck and the diameter of its coupled wheels was . Its total weight in working order was 107.6 tons, of which 63.9 tons were adhesive weight. All three cylinders were of bore with a stroke. The heating surface of the boiler was , of which were superheating area. The grate area was and the locomotive was designed for possible coal dust firing. They had Class 926.0 tenders, which were rebuilt from Class 623.0 tenders.
They were not as successful as expected. One of the Class was tested against a Class 486.0 2’D1’-h3 (4-8-2) locomotive on the hilly mainline between Žilina and Košice on the former Košice-Bohumín Drahy (KBD) line. It proved to be inferior to its opponent in both speed and power.