Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 23, 2006

In the Whyte notation system for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement, a 2-6-0 has a pair of leading wheels followed by six driving wheels. This arrangement is commonly called a Mogul. This type of locomotive was built from the early 1860s to the 1920s. The equivalent UIC classification is 1'C. Although locomotives of this wheel arrangement were built as early as 1852, these first examples had their leading axles mounted directly and rigidly on the frame of the locomotive rather than on a separate truck or bogie. In these early 2-6-0s, the leading axle was merely used to distribute the weight of the locomotive over a larger number of wheels. It did not serve the same purpose as the leading trucks of the Americans or Ten-Wheelers that had been in use for at least a decade. The first true 2-6-0 wasn't built until the early 1860s, the first few being built in 1860 for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. It is likely that the locomotive class name Mogul derives from a locomotive built by Taunton in 1866 for the Central Railroad of New Jersey; that locomotive was named Mogul. However it has also been suggested that, in England, it derived from the engine of that name, built in 1879 by Neilson and Company for the Great Eastern Railway.

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