0-6-0 Steam Locomotives in India

Class BESA/SGS (Locobase 4247)

Data from ca. 1920 Vulcan Foundry catalogue reproduced on []; and "Superheater Engines for the Indian State Railways", Engineer, Volume 114 (11 October 1912), pp/ 384, 386. Vulcan works numbers for the North West engines were 2755-2758 in 1911 and 2779-2781 for the Oudh & Rohikund.

Superheated variant of the British Engineering Standards Association six-coupled freight engine. This appears to be the smaller-boilered counterpart. See the HP 4-6-0 for full description of the BESA intention and varying views of its utility.

Although the 1912 report does not mention the BESA series, the pair of Schmidt-superheater goods locomomotives it displays as one of the batches in a Vulcan Foundry order clearly fill the SGS bill. Four went to the North-Western Railway.,two fitted with Schmidt firetube superheaters and two with Phoenix smoke box superheaters. All three Oudh & Rohikund engines used the Schmidt design superheater.

The accompanying photographs show inside plate frames, cylinders and valve motion inside the frames ("all inside"), low running board with separate splashers over each driver, dome centered on the boiler, Belpaire firebox, and capped stack. A large grate suitable for burning the available indifferent-quality coal was paired with a small boiler.

Some concessions to India's operating conditions included small "cowcatcher" style pilots on the front buffer beam and full cabs shrouding both the footplate and the front of the tender.

Some were delivered with a Phoenix smokebox superheater and 229 tubes in the boiler that provided 1,193.3 sq ft (110.86 sq m) of heating surface. As with other trials in India, the British Isles, and elsewhere, the design didn't prove very effective and it was removed.

Class F (Locobase 3039)

These low-drivered freight engines were built in the hundreds by British companies such as Dubs, Neilson, and Vulcan Foundry. The first batch was delivered with 13 1/2" cylinders, but most had 14" diameter pistons. Ahrons (1927) cites an 1893 letter to The Engineer in which the F class's typical load is given as 425 tons. Loads of 600 tons had been worked at 15 mph, but clearly this was near the engine's limit as an ascent of a 0.5% grade dropped the speed to 5-6 mph. It was an outside-cylinder designed with the cylinders slightly raked.