The GER Class E72 was a class of ten

0-6-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing wheels. This was the most common wheel arrangemen ...

steam locomotives designed by

S. D. Holden Stephen Dewar Holden (23 August 1870 – 7 February 1918) was a British engineer, the son of the engineer James Holden and succeeded his father as locomotive superintendent of the Great Eastern Railway in 1908, a post he held until his retirem ...

for the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

. They all passed to the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

at the

1923 grouping The Railways Act 1921 (c. 55), also known as the Grouping Act, was an Act of Parliament enacted by the British government and intended to stem the losses being made by many of the country's 120 railway companies, by "grouping" them into four la ...

and received the classification J18.

History

These locomotives had inside cylinders driving wheels. They had a distinctive front overhang, not possessed by any other GER 0-6-0 class. This was needed to clear the cylinder tail rods. Locomotive 1240 was fitted for a time with a Weir

feedwater heater A feedwater heater is a power plant component used to pre-heat water delivered to a steam generating boiler. Preheating the feedwater reduces the irreversibilities involved in steam generation and therefore improves the thermodynamic efficiency of ...

and pump, with the heater component mounted on the boiler between the dome and chimney. All were still in service at the 1923 grouping; the LNER adding 7000 to the numbers of nearly all the ex-Great Eastern locomotives, including the Class E72 locomotives. Between 1935 and 1936, the LNER rebuilt them in line with its standards, and reclassified them as class J19/2, the same as the rebuilt GER Class T77 (which had been LNER class J19, later J19/1, before rebuilding). At nationalisation in 1948,

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

added 60000 to their LNER numbers. They all continued in service until 1958, when the first was withdrawn; all were gone by the end of 1961.

References

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External links

— Great Eastern Railway Society
The Hill J18 & J19 (GER Classes E72 & T77) 0-6-0 Locomotives
— LNER Encyclopedia {{DEFAULTSORT:Ger Class E72 Great Eastern Railway locomotives, E72 0-6-0 locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1912 Scrapped locomotives Standard gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain Freight locomotives