Here are the 4-8-4s and their names, here it goes, Northern, Santa Fe, Burlington Route, Milwaukee Road, Chicago and North Western, Rock Island, Delaware and Hudson, Rio Grande, Grand Trunk Western, Great Northern, Soo Line, Missouri Pacific, Northern Pacific, Philadelphia and Reading, Frisco, Cotton Belt, Spokane, Portland and Seattle, Toledo, Peoria and Western, Union Pacific, Wabash, Western Pacific plus 7 more, Golden State (Southern Pacific), Pocono (DL&W), Wyoming (Lehigh Valley), Potomac (Western Maryland), Niagara (New York Central), Greenbrier (Chesapeake and Ohio), and Dixie (Nashvile, Chattanooga and Saint Louis)
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Rio Grande’s were technically called “Westerns”. Also Mountains.
Santa Fe either called them by class number (e.g. 3751, 3765. 3776, 2900) or “Heavy Mountains”
And of course the Norfolk & Western just called them Class J’s. NO WAY was a good southern 'road going to call their 4-8-4’s “Northerns!”
(Not with Appomattox only 75 years in the past and still within living memory of some!)
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The Central of Georgia referred to their K class 4-8-4’s as “Big Apples”!
Was Norfolk and Western really a southern railroad serving the South, of course the 4-8-4s were never called Northerns.
The RF&P running from Richmond VA to DC had their Generals and Governors, I believe all Northerns, but don’t ever be heard calling them that. “Thems fighten words!!” I was at a train show in Richmond a while back talking to their historical society and was informed otherwise when I did. They’re still fighting that war! All in jest!! A great bunch of guys.
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They were called “Northerns” because they were named for the first railroad to have them, Northern Pacific. I guess if Southern Pacific had gotten them first, they would have been “Southerns”. 
NP was also were responsible for 2-8-8-4s being “Yellowstones”.
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And if ALCo had been a might quicker getting the first 4-8-4s to Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the 4-8-4s may have been dubbed “Pocono”.
Actually, it’s Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, not Northern.
Thanks, knew that, had Northern on the brain.
20 of the 31 railroads in the USA called their 4-8-4s Northerns.
You forgot Statesmen on the RF&P. They were also all 4-8-4s (that were never, ever called “Northerns”…)
Collectively up at the top of the list of the best-looking 4-8-4s, too…
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To add a bit to this, Canadians (who one might think would have great white Northerns) instead called them (on CN, which had many) Confederations. This was more interesting than it might at first appear, because when Kenneth Cantlie designed the North-American-scale 4-8-4s for China in the mid-Thirties, he called them ‘Confederations’ as if that were the Empire’s chosen name for the wheel arrangement. With the Chinese locomotive class being… in Roman letters!.. an abbreviation for ‘Confederation’.
Rock Island had 85 4-8-4s in USA whereas Canadian National had 160 4-8-4s in Canada.
The ATSF ETTs in my collection call them “Modified Mountain Type”. The numbering of all but the 2900 class continued sequentially after the last of the 51 3700 class 4-8-2s. The 2900 class of 30 engines would not have fit into the remaining number slots in the 3700 series and 2-10-2s already occupied the 3800 series of numbers.
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The Great Northern called the 4-8-4s, well, Northerns.
Your quip reminded me of the old and unreconstructed rebel who kept getting lost in the woods. When asked why he didn’t use a compass, he replied that he refused to use any thing that always pointed north!
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I believe the RF&P when they got the two orders, name the locomotives in the first order after Generals and the second order after Governors.
Similar to the B&O naming the 20 Pacific’s they bought in 1927 after US Presidents and they were thereafter referred to as President Pacifics.
Don’t forget that the last engines in the second order were named for ‘Statesmen’ and not ‘Governors’…
613 John Marshall
614 George Washington
615 Henry Clay
616 George Mason
617 John Randolph
618 James Madison
619 William Byrd
620 Henry Wythe
621 Richard Henry Lee
622 Carter Braxton
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