Great Eastern 0-4-4 Locomotives in Great_Britain

Class 211 (Locobase 16021)

Data from "The Locomotives of the Great Eastern Railway", The Locomotive, Volume 16 (15 September 1910), p. 185. Three builders turned out 50 locomotives to this basic design in 1875-1878. Neilson & Company delivered 25 (works numbers 2013-2037) in 1875. Robert Stephenson & Company added three in 1876 (works numbers 2211-2213), and seven in 1877 (works 2214-2220). Kitson & Company supplied the last 15 in 1878 (works numbers 2201-2215).

These tanks came with two basic profiles. The first ten Neilsons--road 211-220-- headed for the GER's North Woolwich branch were cropped to fit the loading gauge by adopting a flat-topped dome and short stack. All of the others had the round-topped dome and taller tapered stack. A considerable gap of 11 ft 7 in (3.53 m) separated the two coupled axles under the smokebox and dome and the bogie underpinning the firebox and bunker.

The flat-topped Neilsons would later be refitted with the standard stack.

Class S44 / G4 (Locobase 5905)

Data from Richard Marsden's LNER site -- [] (Jan 2004) . See also "The Locomotives of the Great Eastern Ry", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XIX [19] (15 March 1913), p. 58). First four delivered in 1898, sixteen in 1899, fifteen in 1900, and five in 1901.

A James Holden design to work the Enfield and Chingford lines of the GER. Marsden speculates that Holden's purpose in using this arrangement as opposed to the 2-4-2T already available was to mount a larger boiler.

Of interest to Locobase is the relatively small range of heating surface size for this wheel arrangement in Great Britain; obviously demand to fill such a niche was seen to require a specific size of locomotive. In the S44s, however, Holden used more and smaller-diameter firetubes than were found in most other 0-4-4Ts.

Marsden comments that the G4s could reach a high top speed when running non-stop, but "...acquired a reputation for slow starting when hauling heavy suburban trains." Indeed, the twenties made greater demands on commuter locomotives than the G4s (the LNER classification) could supply, so they were relegated to rural workings. Beginning in 1929 with two of the class, retirements weeded out the rest by 1938.