Overview
The very first 4-8-0 locomotive is believed to have been the "Centipede", a tender locomotive built by Ross Winans in 1855 for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the United States of America (USA), where it remained in service for nearly twenty years. It appears to have been delivered in a cab-forward type of configuration that was modified to a Camel configuration in 1864. On a Camel locomotive the cab was mounted atop the boiler, unlike the later Camelback locomotive whose cab straddled the boiler and that first appeared around 1877.
The name Mastodon for the 4-8-0 wheel arrangement was derived from the unofficial name of the first 4-8-0 locomotive of the Central Pacific Railroad in the USA, the wood-fired CPR no. 229, which was designed and built in 1882 by the railroad's master mechanic, Andrew Jackson (A.J.) Stevens, at the railroad’s Sacramento works in California.
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