All the N&W articulateds weren’t compounds. The A class was simple.
Excuse me, NOT all N&W articulated were Mallets. If I remember correctly, the Y’s were all Mallets, all the 2-8-8-2’s, (and the earlier 2-8-8-0’s) but all the A’s were simple expansion, the 2-6-6-4’s. I hope an N&W expert will verify this.
Well since no one tackled the Berkshire end of it let me see if i can help here. These were for the most part remarkable machines. Ofcourse, to simply begin, Berkshire is the “Whyte Classification Name” for a steam locomotive having a 2-8-4 wheel arrangement. But Whyte didnt coin this name, OH NO no no. Ya see, legend has it that one day this guy named Woodard put this idea he called “Superpower” down on a set of rails. And this railroad said take your locomotive and pull our train over this mountain range faster, stronger, and more efficiently than before. Them mountains used to be called the Berkshires. After that day they would be called “conquered”! So Woodards 2-8-4 took the name of the mountain range and never gave it back. Now some other folks heard of this tale and thought HAH! what nonsense! So they bought 70 of them just to be sure. Thusly was born the “Million Dollar Fast Freights” of the NKP. OK fine the people thought. They have speed, but them NKP and PM folks just dont know how to hook them up! Well low and behold them suckers sure can pull coal too! We’ll take 90 of them. Now this is a great and true story even if it is the very short version. Mr. Woodard worked for Lima. Had a great idea to make the one thing that was lacking in modern ( then) steamers. um… “power at speed”. and we know that the “Superpower” or " Van Sweringen" berkshires as they were sometimes called, actually scaled down C&O Texas Types (2-10-4). Other versions of Berkshires were made aswell but make up the smallest amount of the total. All were very nice looking and in most cases very distinct from road to road. I speak of outward appearance only as for instance the PM, C&O, and NKP were virtually interchangeable. C&O and NKP having the most well known faces while PM and RF&P were very standard. L&N Big Emma’s, unique? yes? The Berkshire story is a very in depth one and one can recant many facts and tales of these fine engines. And at the heart of most of these was Woodards theory in practice that he had made a boiler that