became bigger — 21-inch and 22-inch bores
— and strokes of all the way to 30 inches.
Shortly after 1900, a 2-8-0 locomotive came
out with a fat boiler carrying 200 pounds of
steam, fed by a firebox over the rear drivers
with more than 50 square feet of grate area.
These machines weighed 100 tons, and
many railroads modernized their freight-
hauling fleets with them.
Anthracite-hauling Delaware & Hudson
found the 2-8-0 to be the answer, owning
more than 200 of them. In the 1890s, D&H
tried center-cab 4-8-0s with Wooten fire-
boxes. These engines proved to be slippery,
so a redesign was performed using the
2-8-0 wheel arrangement. Prior to 1907,
these were Camelbacks, to accommodate
the wide Wooten fireboxes required to sat-
isfactorily burn anthracite coal. After 1907,
engine cabs were perched on the end of the
TrainsMag.com 25Consolidations both new and old are still with
us. No. 1702, a 1942 Baldwin product for World
War II, leads a Great Smoky Mountains excur-
sion at Bryson City, N.C., in October 2018.
Among the old timers steaming are Rio
Grande narrow gauge No. 315, built in 1895,
and currently in residency at the Cumbres &
Toltec Scenic Railroad.