Word.ws English Dictionary

4-6-4

4-6-4 noun: under the Whyte notation system, a steam locomotive that has four leading wheels arranged in a leading truck, six coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels in a trailing truck.

4-6-4: under the Whyte notation system, a steam locomotive that has four leading wheels arranged in a...
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Noun

4-6-4 (plural 4-6-4s)

  1. Under the Whyte notation system, a steam locomotive that has four leading wheels arranged in a leading truck, six coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels in a trailing truck.
    • No sooner had a waiting locomotive backed on to its train, the vociferous 4-6-4 or 4-8-4 re-emerged from under the bridge, and the two red marker lights on the last vehicles passed, than the headlight of the electric engine hauling the following train could be seen under the bridge and the waiting...1954 January, H. P. White, “Vignettes of the Rail”, in Railway Magazine, page 54, at Harmon station, New York
    • Most Canadian engines are black. [...] The C.N.R. has only three classes of non-black engines, the "6400s", the later 4-8-2s and the 4-6-4s.1959 November, J. N. Westwood, “The Railways of Canada”, in Trains Illustrated, page 552

Forms of 4-6-4

plural4-6-4s

Questions about 4-6-4

What does 4-6-4 mean?
4-6-4 means under the Whyte notation system, a steam locomotive that has four leading wheels arranged in a leading truck, six coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels in a trailing truck.
What part of speech is 4-6-4?
4-6-4 is a noun.
What is the plural of 4-6-4?
The plural of 4-6-4 is 4-6-4s.

Words near 4-6-4 in the dictionary

  1. 4-6-0s
  2. 4-6-2
  3. 4-6-2+2-6-4
  4. 4-6-2+2-6-4s
  5. 4-6-2s
  6. 4-6-4
  7. 4-6-4-4
  8. 4-6-4-4s
  9. 4-6-4s
  10. 4-6-6-2
  11. 4-6-6-2s

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 4-6-4 (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “4-6-4.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/4-6-4. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.