The Baldwin Locomotive Works Erie Triplex is a 2-8-8-8-2 steam locomotive built for the Erie Railroad in 1914 - 1916. It was designed to haul heavy trains over steep hills at low speed. However these locomotives, with their rather unique design, proved to be rather ineffective. While they could provide excellent tractive effort they could only do so for a very short period of time and the drawbars, couplers, and freight car frames of the time could not handle the strain these engines created. The engines were also incapable of achieving a speed greater then 10 mph which lead to these engines becoming helpers, used only to push other trains up hills. Although Erie would order two more triplexes all three were scrapped by 1933. Baldwin built a fourth triplex, a 2-8-8-8-4, for the Virginian Railway but this too suffered from serious problems and was returned to Baldwin in 1920 to be converted.

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Next up in my railroad fleet, Baldwins 2-8-8-8-2 triplex. This build turned out to be a rather interesting one and I teased it a few months ago. I did end up essentially rebuilding the engine to better scale it with the Big Boy and I think it came out rather well. The third set of drive wheels under the tender are really unique and while researching new engines to build I knew this had to be one of them. A lot of the images of the triplex make it difficult to nail exact details and I had to look up the scale models to get a better look at it. Overall though I'm pleased with how this one turned out.

If you're interested in seeing this, or more of my builds, you can visit them on The Realism Society! Just enter the IP mc.realismsociety.com