Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-4-2 represents the wheel arrangement with no leading wheels, four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles, and two trailing wheels on one axle. The configuration was often used for tank engines, which is noted by adding a T to the end, 0-4-2T, although the type was used in the 1880s and 1890s for some famous tender engines.
Other equivalent classifications are:
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The earliest recorded 0-4-2 locomotives were three goods engines built by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Stanhope and Tyne Railway in 1834.[1]] The first locomotive built in Germany in 1838, the Saxonia, was also an 0-4-2. In the same year Todd, Kitson & Laird built two examples for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, one of which, LMR 57 Lion, has been preserved.
Over the next quarter of a century the type was adopted by many early British railways for freight haulage, as it afforded greater adhesion than the contemporary 2-2-2 passenger configuration, although in time they were also used for mixed traffic duties. However, from the mid-1860s onwards the type tended only to be used on tank engines, except in Scotland on the Caledonian and Glasgow and South Western railways and in southern England on the London Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and the London and South Western Railway. The LB&SCR uniquely built express passenger 0-4-2 tender classes until 1891.
William Stroudley of the LB&SCR built four very successful 0-4-2 classes (three tender and one tank) between 1873 and 1891. The first of these was his powerful D-tank for suburban passenger work. One hundred and twenty five of these had been built by 1887, some of which survived in service until 1951. However, the most famous class were his Gladstone class express passenger locomotives, the first of which has been preserved.
The Great Western Railway built a number of standard gauge 0-4-2T classes for branch line passenger work from 1868 to a design known as the 517 class by George Armstrong (engineer). This design was developed until the GWR 1400 Class built between 1932 and 1936, designed for autotrains. These were the last UK examples of this wheel arrangement: four of them have been preserved.
The 0-4-2T arrangement was used by two classes of locomotives operated by the New Zealand Railways Department. The first was the C class of 1873, originally built as 0-4-0T. The class was found to be unstable at speeds higher than 15 mph, so by 1880, all members of the class had been converted to 0-4-2T to rectify this problem. The second and more notable 0-4-2T class, and the only one actually built as 0-4-2T, was the unique H class designed to operate the Rimutaka Incline on the Wairarapa Line. The Incline's steep gradient necessitated the use of the Fell mountain railway system, and the six members of the H class spent their entire lives operating trains on the Incline. Except for a few brief experiments with other classes, the H class had exclusive use of the Incline from their introduction in 1875 until the Incline's closure in 1955. The class leader, H 199, is preserved on static display at the Fell Engine Museum in Featherston and is the only extant Fell locomotive in the world.
0-4-2T was also employed for steam locomotives operated by small private industrial railways and bush and mineral tramways. One such locomotive, built by Peckett and Sons in 1938, is currently operational on the Goldfields Railway that runs between Waihi and Waikino along a stretch of the former route of the East Coast Main Trunk Railway in the Bay of Plenty.
Although the type was not used by any major railroads in North America, H. K. Porter, Inc and the Baldwin Locomotive Works produced many small tank locomotives of this type for industrial and plantation work. The 0-4-2T Olomana built by Baldwin in 1883 is a famous example of such types. [2]
The first railway locomotive in South Africa was a Standard gauge 0-4-2WT well-tank locomotive that was built in 1858 by R and W Hawthorn in Leith, Scotland, for Messrs. E. & J. Pickering, the contractors to the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company for the construction of the Cape Town-Wellington Railway. The locomotive later became the Cape Town-Wellington Railway’s engine number 9 and was eventually nicknamed "Blackie". It was declared a National Monument in 1936 and was plinthed in the main concourse of Cape Town station.[3]
Two tank engine classes of this wheel arrangement were supplied to the Nederlandsche-Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorwegmaatschappij (NZASM) by the Maschinenfabrik Esslingen in 1890 and 1908. The earlier class was for suburban services and was designed for push-pull operation. The latter class was equipped with pinions for use on a rack railway on the section between Waterval-Onder and Waterval-Boven in the eastern Transvaal.[4]
Between 1897 and 1901 several 0-4-2ST saddle tank steam locomotives, built for 600 millimetres (23.62 inches) narrow gauge by Dickson Manufacturing Company of Scranton in Pennsylvania, were delivered to various gold mines on the Witwatersrand by Arthur Koppel, acting as importing agents. In 1915, when an urgent need arose for additional locomotives in Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika (now Namibia) during World War I, two of these locomotives were purchased second-hand by the South African Railways (SAR) for use on the narrow gauge lines in that territory. The two locomotives remained in South West Africa after the war. When a system of grouping narrow gauge locomotives into classes was introduced on the SAR somewhere between 1928 and 1930, these two locomotives were classified as Class NG2.[4][5][6]
In 1905 the Nederlands Indische Spoorweg opened a line between Yogyakarta and Ambarawa via Magelang., a hilly region requiring a rack railway because of the 6.5% gradients. The B25 wood burning locomotive 0-4-2T class were made for this line by Maschinenfabrik Esslingen, Germany, in 1902. They were four cylinder compound locomotives. two of which worked the pinion wheels. There are two examples of B25 locomotive still in operation, namely B25-02 and B25-03. Both were based in Ambarawa, where they have served for more than a hundred years. Locomotive B25-01 may also still be found at the entrance to the Ambarawa Railway Museum. / Ambarawa station.
On the island of Sumatra, there are some larger cousins of this class used for pulling coal trains, namely the D18 and E10 classes.
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