The Bulgarian State Railways Class 46 is a class of steam locomotives that have twelve coupled driving wheels (12 driving wheels on a single rigid frame).
Background[]
These 20 steam locomotives were constructed in 1931 and 1943, they are 2-12-4T steam locomotives, thus making them some of the largest tank engines ever built, the Bulgarian State railway-men gave these locomotives a nickname of "Mother Bear" because they thought they looked compact, but they were very powerful, these locomotives were designed to haul heavy coal trains on mountainous lines and based off of that, they were astonishingly successful, they were incredible at that one job, they were known to be one of the most popular steam locomotives to ever operate in Europe, though some say that this fact about them is somewhat debatable.
Results to why are they overlooked[]
After all their wheel arrangement (2-12-4T) isn't that different from 4-12-2 (or A.k.a "Union Pacific's"), which is the wheel arrangement for the Union Pacific 9000 Class 4-12-2s, the only difference between the Class 46s and UP 9000s, is that they reversed the leading and trailing wheels, which does change the physics slightly but the driving wheels are the same, when it comes to the world stage there are a lot of countries that tend to get more international acclaim when it comes to certain stuff (E.g: The Superpower Countries: USA/United States Of America, Russia/Soviet Union, China), when it comes to locomotives, The United Kingdom (UK) and their former colonies definitely get noticed a lot more, after all the United Kingdom (UK) did invent trains. But outside of them a lot of other countries locomotive history tends to stay rather local.
Preservation[]
Two members of the Bulgarian State Railways Class 46 are in Preservation and one of them, No. 46.03 was restored to running condition and returned to steam power in May 2015, the remaining 18 were scrapped.
Gallery[]
