Broadway Limited 6965 | SP&S E-1 4-8-4, #700, Modern Excursion Version, Paragon4 Sound/DC/DCC, Smoke | HO Scale

By the 1920s the Northern Pacific Railroad needed bigger passenger locomotives. With the help of the American Locomotive Company's design engineers, NP designed a new locomotive with a massive firebox that had a 115 square foot grate area supported by a four wheel trailing truck. It was the first locomotive with a 4-8-4 wheel arrangement. ALCO delivered the first of 12 of these new locomotives in December of 1926, with the balance arriving early in 1927. Designated Class A, and assigned road numbers 2600 through 2611, they had 73" drivers, 28 x 30" cylinders, a boiler pressure of 210 psi, a tractive effort of 57,500 lbs and weighed 426,000 pounds. Later, the boiler pressure was raised to 240 psi which increased the tractive effort to 65,700 pounds. These were the first of this new wheel arrangement and thus were to be the namesake, with the name Northern Pacific selected which was very quickly shortened to just Northern.  Ten Class A-2s (road numbers 2650 through 2659) came from the