O Erie 2-8-8-8-2 Triplex Steam Loco/3.0/Hi-Rail

Product Copy:
P. T. Barnum would have loved the Triplex. It was an
engine of superlatives: more drivers than anything before or since, too
big for the shops of its owner, the Erie Railroad, powerful enough to
pull a train nearly five miles long. Ninety years ago, in the days
before multiple-unit control allowed one throttle to control several
locomotives, the Triplex was the ultimate attempt to put as much power
as possible in the hands of a single engineer. In the end, it proved a
noble, flamboyant, but less-than-successful experiment.Baldwin
Locomotive Works built three triplexes between 1914 and 1916 for pusher
service on the Erie Railroad’s daunting Susquehanna Hill (also known as
Gulf Summit) near Deposit, N.Y. The cylinders of the Triplex’s middle
engine were powered by high pressure steam direct from the boiler,
while the front and rear engines used low pressure steam exhausted from
the middle cylinders. Each triplex replaced three ordinary helper
engines, and the new locomotives worked well enough to stay on the Erie
roster for more than a decade. But the design proved a bit over the top
and only one more Triplex was ever built, for the Virginian Railway.
Even with their huge boilers, the locomotives could only make enough
steam to go 10 mph. One reason was poor draft in the firebox, because
only the front cylinders exhausted through the smokebox and created
draft; the rear cylinders exhausted through a separate smokestack on
the tender. Another inherent problem with the design was that traction
from the rear engine decreased as the boiler used coal and water and
the tender got lighter.
Returning to the M.T.H. lineup for 2015, the Premier Triplex recreates
the sound, the smoke, and the flamboyance of the original design – but
runs much better than the prototype ever did. Only MTH engineering
could make such a complex model run smoothly and steadily at speeds
from a barely perceptible crawl to wide-open throttle. Add the Triplex
to your roster and experience the sheer visual drama of one of the
grand experiments in early twentieth century heavy machinery.

Did You Know?
The Triplex was engineered to haul 640 fifty-ton cars in a train almost
five miles long. But the couplers and draft gear of the early twentieth
century could not have handled such a load, so the 2-8-8-8-2 was used
as a pusher and never put to a full test.