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Apologies about the cropping of this picture, but it is parked near a fence, making it difficult to get far enough back to get it all in frame with my little Advantix camera. (plus the cropping the fotomat did on the panoramic cut the top and the bottom of the locomotive off.) Just as a sheer size indicator, the woman next to it is 5'4" tall.. less than the height of even the massive drive wheels. This ex-Nickel Plate Road locomotive is impressive in any viewing setting. But sitting out in the yard at the PRR Museum, it is even more impressive. If you are lucky enough to get there on a day where the yard is open, as you come out the back door, (past the Mountain class sitting right next to the building), between a few freight cars you can see the turntable. The way they have this parked, all you can see from the back of the building is the rear of the tender. It seems to grow as you walk around towards it, until you realize, this machine is just impressive in its own right, as a giant testimonial toward man's ability to engineer. Designed and first built in 1925, the Berkshire class was originally a redesign of the Mikado type done by Lima Locomotive Works. The prototype A-1 locomotive pulled a 54 car, 2296 ton train up an eastbound climb through the Berkshires, and actually arrived AHEAD of a Mikado pulling a similar train that had passed through 47 minutes earlier, carrying about 1000 fewer tons. This impressive first run was enough to convince purchasers, who began buying them immediately. Of the original Berk's built, only 20 survive today.
This particular beast was built in 1944, and is the heaviest locomotive at the PRR Museum, weighing in at a hefty 802,000 lbs. Seeing one of these haul by with a freight or a coal drag must have been quite the spectacle! |
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