Don’t forget C&O’s “Greenbrier” class of which the Chessie 614 is a member of 
Norfolk and Western was like 85% inside Virginia, home of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. Hard to think of any state with a bigger claim on representing the south
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So, is this considered.a mistake? Ernest “Mooney” Warther carved this model out of ebony, ivory and mother of pearl in 1933. It was Mooney’s favorite. But did he make a mistake calling a 4-8-4 a “mountain type” or did Great Northern actually call them that? Just always been curious.
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And CP had just two. They are beautiful (both are preserved) but they weren’t considered good enough to replicate. From what I’ve read, they were poor on acceleration and wound up being used on the night sleeper trains between Toronto and Montreal.
There is a part of this run where CN and CP parallel each other, between Cobourg, ON and Trenton, ON. Both railroads had trains which were scheduled to depart Cobourg eastbound at the same time. CP’s was the aforementioned night sleeper. If they were on time, both engineers pulled back on their throttles at the same time. When the CP train had one of the 4-8-4s it would soon be left in CN’s dust. Only if it had a Royal Hudson assigned for that night did the CP stand a chance of holding their own against the CN.
Incidentally, “Confederation” was the name that CN assigned to their 4-8-4s. It was to commemorate the confederation of all the predecessor lines into the government-run Canadian National. I don’t think CP used that name for their machines. I suspect the Chinese just copied the name, the way that Nacionales de Mexico copied the name “Niagara” for their 4-8-4s.
That doesn’t do justice either to Kenneth Cantlie, the British designer of the Chinese 4-8-4s, or to the Mexicans.
Cantlie needed an ‘Empire name’ for the wheel arrangement, and chose the Canadian sobriquet (possibly because of the number of CN examples; I think only the Russians were in contention to have more 4-8-4s, and at the time in the mid-Thirties the Chinese locomotives were designed, the Russians had none yet…) The Chinese respected his memory by keeping the CF in Roman letters, even after the Cultural Revolution.
The Mexicans adopted the Alco name for modern 4-8-4s, and interestingly the way they pronounce it is far closer to the actual Native American pronunciation of the name. You will find morons who try to spell the name ‘Niagra’ to belittle our southern neighbors. The name is spelled exactly the same as the NYC engines, except for one accent.
I don’t know the history of the Chinese 4-8-4s, but “Niagara” was the New York Central’s name for the 4-8-4, not ALCOs name. My understanding is that the Mexicans pronounced it nee-AH-gara.
As to 'morons", it was a common belief when I was growing up (I’m 67) that the Mexicans spelled it “Niagra” because of an early article about the locomotives that appeared in one of the trade magazines, not to denegrate the Mexicans. My father believed that, because he had read that particular article, and my father was not a moron. He was a high school graduate and an auto-didact who could run rings around many of the college indoctrinated fools who graduate universities today.
It is pretty well established now that it is spelled Niágara, and this NdeM document should lay the whole thing to rest.
BTW, apart from Niágara name, 4-8-4 wheel arrangement and ALCo builder, they had little else in common with the New York Central’s Niagaras. The were pocket-sized 4-8-4s designed, as most steam locomotives were, for the track, clearances, type of service, etc of the NdeM.
