On this day in April 1952, #2200, the last of the aforementioned Y6b class locomotives left the Roanoke Shops.

It is rumored that at least two Y6b locomotives survived into the late 1970s in a Roanoke scrapyard, but ultimately fell to the unyielding torches of the murderous maw which demands the sacrifice of history. Yes, I'm waxing either maudlin or grotesque, but blast it, Biggs, where were the Claytor brothers when you needed them?

The only surviving Y-class locomotive resides far from home, in the National Transportation Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. When I'm King of the World---with apologies to James Cameron---Y6a #2156 will be returned to her proper place with #611 and #1218 under the Claytor Pavilion at the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

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On this day in 1948, #2171, the first of thirty locomotives in the Y6b class of 2-8-8-2 steam locomotives rolled clear of the N&W's Roanoke Shops. These monsters weighed 961,500 pounds, complete with a loaded tender.

The entire Y class of locomotives was not designed for anything like the "Wabash Cannonball" or other high-speed freight applications, much less passenger service. The N&W had the A and J classes of locomotives for that, respectively. The Y class was intended to pull (or push) huge coal drags out of the dark hollows of West Virginia, the kinds of places that Chuck Yeager used to suggest would need sunlight piped in. Back then, and even today, coal drags are not the fastest things in the world. Sources tell me that the CSX rulebook imposes a 40MPH speed limit on coal trains, mostly so that coal won't be sucked out of the hoppers and lost to the buyer. (After all, we don't want that; the shipper and recipient might want to pay less for the service.)

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