Although famous for its 80 class S Berkshires (2-8-4), the Nickel Plate Road (New York, Chicago & St. Louis) actually rostered more Mikado or 2-8-2 type engines, owning a total of 107. (Counting the Lake Erie & Western and the Wheeling & Lake Erie, which the Nickel Plate absorbed, the totals were 111 Berkshires and 142 Mikados.) The H-6 class was an upgraded design based on the USRA light Mikado type. Like most "Mikes" they had 63-inch drivers. Their cylinders measured 26x30 inches and they carried 200 pounds per square inch of boiler pressure. With a grate area of 67 square feet, they had an evaporative heating surface of 3745 square feet and a superheater surface of 880 square feet. They weighed 319,400 pounds and developed 54,700 pounds of tractive force. The Nickel Plate had 72 locomotives in the six H-6 subclasses; the last 57 were erected with a booster in the trailing truck that added around 8200 pounds to the tractive effort while starting a heavy train.

No. 636 of class H-6e rolled off the Lima Locomotive Works erecting floor in 1923. In this photo of indeterminate origin, from the collection of Gary Thompson, she appears at Madison, Illinois. Her Elesco feedwater heater was a rare appliance among Nickel Plate locomotives, while the cylinder bracing (applied due to a tendency of the cylinders to crack) was typical of this class. No. 636 was wrecked at Findlay, Ohio in 1943 (Ray Breyer provided me with a photo of the wreck) but her number was not stricken from the NKP roster until 1945. Three Nickel Plate 2-8-2s remain, including H-6e sister No. 639 on display in Miller Park, Bloomington, Illinois.