A top speed of 70 mph sounds a little bit slow by our standards, but then transport-strategy in the continental USA was rather diffreent from ours here. And 500 tons (engine and tender) didn’t matter if what you had to cross was a thousand miles, and time was (sort of) no object.
But, if you look carefully at the driving-wheels of this engine, which is what we’d here call a 4-6-6-4, they are really quite small. Not like the 6ft-9″ – or sometimes even bigger – of Britain’s fastest express engines. 70 mph for this one here is a bit like a Dachshund trying to sprint: I doubt whether they are bigger than 5 feet. (I notice that it has a Kylchap-type multiple-jet-blastpipe, or else something similar, for the exhaust-steam. It would need it.)
We had to get moderate trains (500-1,000 tons all up) moderate distances – say 200-600 miles – in very short times like a few hours or less. Some stuff – like fish, or milk – was perishable in the extreme. This was the point of railways in Britain: to reduce the price of commodities by a third to two thirds in 20 years or less.
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