page_title: 4-8-4
section_title: Soviet Union
hierarchical_section_title: 4-8-4 / Usage / Soviet Union
caption_attribution_description: English: Russian steam locomotive П36-001. Moscow railroad museum Русский: Русский паровоз П36-001. Московский железнодорожный музей.
context_page_description: Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-8-4 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, eight powered and coupled driving wheels on four axles and four trailing wheels on two axles. The type was first used by the Northern Pacific Railway, and initially named the Northern Pacific, but railfans and railroad employees have shortened the name when referring to the type, and now is most commonly known as a Northern.
context_section_description: Outside North America, the largest fleet of 4-8-4 locomotives was the Class P36 of the Sovetskie Zheleznye Dorogi (SZhD) or Soviet Railways, of which 251 were built by the Kolomna locomotive works between 1949 and 1956. As the last Soviet standard class steam locomotive, the Class P36 shared some common components and design attributes with earlier standard Soviet designs such as the L class 2-10-0 Decapod type and LV class 2-10-2 Santa Fe type, as well as some common attributes with the P34 class 2-6-6-2 Mallet and P38 class 2-8-8-4 Yellowstone type Mallet. For example, the P36 and LV classes shared the same feedwater heater, made by the Bryansk machine factory. Apart from a trio of fully streamlined 4-6-4 Baltic type locomotives, they were the only semi-streamlined steam locomotives built in Russia.
  The Class P36 was one of the best passenger steam locomotive classes built in the Soviet Union. They had boilers with 243.2 square metres (2,618 square feet) of heating surface that had a working boiler pressure of 1.5 megapascals (220 pounds per square inch). Russian-designed roller bearings were fitted throughout and the boilers were designed to provide a continuous steaming capacity of 57 kilograms (126 pounds) per one square metre (11 square feet) of heating surface in the boiler. With its 575 by 800 millimetres (22.6 by 31.5 inches) cylinders and 1,850 millimetres (72.83 inches) diameter coupled wheels, it could easily attain speeds up to 125 kilometres per hour (78 miles per hour) with passenger trains of up to 800 tonnes (790 long tons; 880 short tons).
  The Class P36 first appeared on the Oktyabrskaya Railway (October Railway) to haul principal express trains between Moscow and Leningrad, but they did not remain on this 650 kilometres (400 miles) mainline long. Diesels took over after only a few years and the P36 class locomotives were transferred to other lines and depots, such as the Moscow–Kursk and Moscow–Ryazan lines, Kalinin, Krasnoyarsk, Belarusian Railway, Melitopol depot, Kuibyshev and Alexandrov depot.
  Later, when electrification and dieselisation expanded, many of the Class P36 locomotives were transferred to work on the Lviv, Far East, Eastern Siberia, and Transbaikal Railways. The last was withdrawn from regular scheduled express passenger train service in 1974. All were staged in full working order and kept in reserve for times of extraordinary demand. At certain intervals, the locomotives were taken out from staging, steamed up and put to work to haul trains to test the condition of the locomotives. In the late 1980s, these strategic reserves of locomotives were disbanded and the Class P36 locomotives were distributed to museums and for preservation. Some that had not seen regular use for more than fifteen years and were in the worst mechanical condition, were scrapped. It was found that the roller bearings suffered most by standing unused. When the computerised new class numbers were introduced by the Russian Ministry of Railways, the Class P36 were designated Class 1000.0001 to 1000.0251. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number were sold to private train operators.
caption: Class P36-0071
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