East Indian 2-2-2 Locomotives in India

Class 1 (Locobase 16104)

Data from tracing archived at [], last accessed 26 July 2015. Works numbers were 337-341 in 1852.

Immediately following into production the five goods locomotives shown in Locobase 16103, these express single-driver engines differed only in the wheel arrangement and the 18" taller drivers and an inch less diameter in the cylinders. The latter seems an odd change given the lower tractive effort already implied in the much higher drivers.

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Class Express (Locobase 13577)

Data from "East Indian Railway Locomotives," The Locomotive Magazine, Volume VIII [8] (25April 1903), p. 282. See also Sharell Cook, "India's Steam Express (Fairy Queen) Train: Essential Travel Guide on the tripsavvy website at [], last accessed 8 January 2022; and "Fairy Queen (locomotive)" in Wikipedia at []), last accessed 8 January 2022.. Kitson works numbers were 480-481 in 1856.

The Express and the Fairy Queen operated on the 125 3/4 mile (202 km) Howrah-Raneegunge[sic - Raniganj] line in West Bengal as very light passenger and mail engines. Although the locomotives trailed small coal tenders, their sizable water tanks lay under their boilers. When the Indian Rebellion (also called the Sepoy Mutiny) broke out in 1857, the pair ferried troops. The Fairy Queen's last service occurred in Bihar where it worked as a construction engine.

Fairy Queen's retirement came in 1909 and it went on display outsided Kolkata's Howrah Railway Station. In 1943, wartime exigencies led to its deployment at the Railway Zonal Training School at Chandausi in Uttar Pradesh. Its preservation as part of India's heritage in 1972 and subsequent installment as an exhibit at Delhi's newly opened National Railway Museum in 1977.

According to the 1998 Guiness Book of Records, Fairy Queen is the oldest steam locomotive in regular operation aftter a restoration and service entry in 1998. Its very successful re-entry into service ended in 2011 when its operator discovered that "On arrival, it was found that an estimated 50 to 60 parts had been looted", according to Wikipedia, "including 'the boiler, condensor, lubricator and flow tubes'. At the time of its arrival at Perambur Locomotive Workshop in Tamil Nadu, the facility's Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer gloomily assessed its condition. "What we received is a dead body, a piece of metal whose every removable part has been removed, leaving only the metal shell. The list of parts to be procured is huge' .

Incredibly, even though many of the missing parts needed to be replicated from scratch, the Fairy Queen went back into service on 22 December 2012.