By 1912, the Denver Rio Grande & Western's premium passenger trains had grown so long that even double-headed 4-6-0s were having difficulty maintaining the schedules. Baldwin provided the answer to improve on-time performance in the form of six 4-6-2s. Using the same boiler as the 2-8-2s Baldwin built for the road in 1912, and the reletively low 67" drivers of the 4-6-0s, the P-44 class had fireboxes with twice the grate area and nearly fifty percent more tractive effort compared to the most modern 4-6-0s on the DRG&W. Double heading was eliminated, except for the four percent grades over Tennessee Pass and Soldier Summit.

The P-44 pulled the east bound "Atlantic Coast Limited" and the west bound "Pacific Coast Limited" until 1922, when they were replaced by 4-8-2s. The P-44s were then used on secondary mainline trains until 1945, when they replaced the 4-6-0s on the passenger trains of the Craig, Montrose, and Alamosa branches. The six pacifics were scrapped between 1949 and 1953.