‘super tanks’ – britain’s nearly 100 ton tank locomotives

Britain’s first Baltic tanks were ordered by the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway to become its Nos 87-94 but were in fact delivered to the Midland Railway (Nos 2100-07) following the LT&SR being absorbed by that company. Completed by Beyer, Peacock & Co Ltd as Works No 5612, Robert Whitelegg-designed 4-6-4T No 2104 heads east away from Upminster with a train of six-wheel carriages bound for Southend in the period immediately before World War I. This class of eight superheated engines was officially taken into MR stock in April/May 1913 and it was only after delivery that it was discovered that underbridges between Barking and Fenchurch Street were not strong enough to permit the regular use of these 90-plus ton engines. In due course, during the war the Midland Railway used these 4-6-4Ts on the heavy coal trains running between Wellingborough and Brent Sidings, where they were often double-headed by a Johnson 0-6-0 or 4-2-2; passenger use on outer suburban St Pancras duties would follow.

Roy F Burrows Midland Collection Trust/Kidderminster Railway Museum

After 1900 British locomotives rapidly increased in size and diversity, as was reflected in their total working weight and their many varied wheel arrangements respectively. This was particularly true regarding tank locomotives, which for many years until about 1953 consistently accounted overall for about 40% of the total British main line locomotive stock, although the actual proportions on an individual railway company basis varied quite considerably.

As of 1900 the heaviest tank engines in Britain were of two very different outside-cylinder 0-8-2T types, a new wheel arrangement, both of them in South Wales. These were six locomotives built in 1896 for the Barry Railway by Sharp, Stewart & Co Ltd in Glasgow, and two others that were most unusually imported from the USA in 1899 by the Port Talbot Railway & Docks Co (PTR) these being built by Cooke Locomotive & Machine Works in New Jersey. Both types happened to weigh 75 tons, as did three more 0-8-2Ts obtained by the PTR in 1901 from Sharp, Stewart & Co that closely resembled the six Barry engines; at this time the locomotive superintendents of these two railways were brothers, John and Walter Hosgood, of the Barry Railway and PTR respectively.

In 1902 the Great Eastern Railway (GER) at Strat