Description
The merits of a six wheeled tank engine were made immediately clear when Timothy Hackworth’s Royal George rolled out onto the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1827. By the mid 1860s they had become almost as common as their 0-4-0 cousins, and by the early 1900s they had become a mainstay of branch lines and shunting yards from Penzance to Poolewe.
The South East and Chatham Railway would have utilised such engines on their lines throughout Kent, and the locomotives would continue into service with the Southern Railway after the Grouping Act. Inside cylinder tank engines would have seen most of their use on the SECR hauling freight in and around London, with their small coal bunkers all but relegating them from straying too far away from the yards they would be stabled in.
Such locomotives would stay in use with the SR and subsequently British Railways until the early 1960s, having proved themselves to be very useful engines indeed.
