Why there are no Hudson 4-6-4 types in the West

[SPer]

The Santa Fe is the only Western railroad to buy Hudson type locomotives in the 3450 and 3460 classes it seems to me that the 4-6-4 type were ignored by other Western railroads. Why the Hudson 4-6-4 type were unpopular in the West.

[ACY Tom]

Pretty much the same as the Berkshire question.  Size and clearances.  When 4-wheel trailing trucks were developed, Western roads for the most part jumped from 4-6-2's and 4-8-2's to 4-8-4's because they had the clearances to do it.  Their premiere trains tended to be fast runs over long distances, which is the perfect milieu for a 4-8-4.  When the Northerns came along, those Western roads had enough displaced Pacifics and Mountains to take care of secondary schedules, so they didn't need a Hudson to handle the lighter trains.

In the East, NYC's 275 Hudsons fit within that road's clearances, and did the job pretty well.  The Passenger Mohawks weren't much bigger.  When they finally bought the Niagaras, it was pretty obvious that the design was painfully squeezed into a clearance profile that shouldn't logically have allowed for such a big engine.  NKP never needed anything bigger than a 4-6-4.  C&O used their Hudsons on relatively flatter terrain to pull the same trains that Greenbriers were pulling over the mountains.

 

[NorthWest]

CB&Q, MILW, and CNW all had 4-6-4s.

[agentatascadero]

Why?  Hudsons were simply too small for the job out west...with big trains,  lots of grades.  The Hudsons the western roads did have were assigned to the flatlands of the midwest.  AA

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

ACY

 NKP never needed anything bigger than a 4-6-4. 

When the passenger trains became too big for the Hudsons, NKP bought 11 PA1's.

[ACY Tom]

I'm not so sure the NKP passenger trains ever became too big for the Hudsons, at least not on a regular basis.  But if that happened, the road had 80 very capable Berkshires that could come to the rescue.  These were supplemented by 32 more very similar Berkshires acquired with the W&LE.

Tom 

[CAZEPHYR]

NKP purchased the PA's to dieselize since their Hudson type steam locos were twenty years old.  Their passenger trains were never large.

RR

[daveklepper]

Actually, one PA was less powerful than a NKP Hudson.   But lightweight equipment was introduced about the same time.

[MidlandMike]

SLSF also had Hudsons.