page_title: 4-6-2
section_title: France
hierarchical_section_title: 4-6-2 / Usage / France
caption_attribution_description: The steam locomotive Pacific "231 4546" of the Paris-Orleans railway company at the Cité du Train (Mulhouse, France)
context_page_description: Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-6-2 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and two trailing wheels on one axle. The 4-6-2 locomotive became almost globally known as a Pacific type.
context_section_description: France was a major user of the 4-6-2 Pacific type. Following the introduction of two successful Paris à Orléans prototypes in 1907, a further 1,362 Pacific locomotives were built for or acquired by the major French railway companies, including those acquired from Germany following the terms of the Armistice in 1918.
  The Paris à Orléans ordered a further 98 Pacific locomotives that were delivered between 1908 and 1910, and another 89 in 1909 and 1910. Another fifty were ordered from the American Locomotive Company in 1921 and forty of the type TP-État were bought in 1923. The company was particularly famous for the Chapelon Pacifics of 1929 to 1932.
  The L'Ouest followed with two prototype 4-6-2 locomotives in 1908, but did not continue with the Pacific type.
  The Alsace-Lorraine built eight Pacific locomotives in 1909, at the time when the railway was still under German control. These became French locomotives in 1920.
  The Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM) was the largest French user of Pacific locomotives, owning 462, built between 1909 and 1932. These were both compound and simplex locomotives and were built both with and without superheaters. Large numbers were later rebuilt to compounds or to incorporate superheaters by both the PLM and the state-owned Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF).
  The Nord built 139 Pacific locomotives from 1912, including the various so-called Superpacific types of 1923 to 1931. The company also ordered Chapelon type rebuilds from the Paris à Orléans in 1934, and new-built locomotives between 1936 and 1938.
  The L'État owned 352 Pacific locomotives, some of which were transferred from the Bavarian Railways and Württemberg Railways as Armistice reparations in 1918.
  The Midi likewise owned altogether forty Pacific locomotives, acquired in three batches.
  The eastern L'Est never built a 4-6-2, preferring its 4-6-0 Ten-wheeler types until it progressed straight to the much larger 4-8-2 Mountain type. The L'Est nevertheless bought Pacific locomotives to the designs of other companies, including forty TP-État type class 11 s locomotives between 1921 and 1923, and twelve class 12 s Chapelon rebuilds in 1934.
  After nationalisation in 1938, the SNCF built no more Pacifics, although it continued to rebuild some of the existing stock running on lines already established by the private railway companies, particularly by continuing to apply the great improvements brought about by the work of André Chapelon.
caption: Paris à Orléans 4546 at the Cité du train at Mulhouse
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