The GER Class E22 was a class of twenty

Steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s designed by James Holden 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 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 grouping in 1923 and received the LNER classification J65.

History

These had

coupled wheels On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotive's pistons (or turbine, in the case of a steam turbine locomotive). On a conventional, non-articulated locomotive, the driving wheels are all coupled tog ...

cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...

s and were lighter than the T18 (LNER J66) class. They were reboilered between 1889 and 1912. The

Macallan variable blastpipe The blastpipe is part of the exhaust system of a steam locomotive that discharges exhaust steam from the cylinders into the smokebox beneath the chimney in order to increase the draught through the fire. History The primacy of discovery of the ...

was removed from 1924. They ran as s on the

Fenchurch Street Fenchurch Street is a street in London linking Aldgate at its eastern end with Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street in the west. It is a well-known thoroughfare in the City of London financial district and is the site of many corporate office ...

to Blackwall service and were sometimes known as ''Blackwall Tanks''. They operated on the

Stoke Ferry Stoke Ferry is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk, 6.5 miles south-east of Downham Market. The village lies on the River Wissey, previously known as the River Stoke. It covers an area of and had a population of 896 in 3 ...

, Eye and

Mid-Suffolk Light Railway The Mid-Suffolk Light Railway (MSLR) was a standard gauge railway intended to open up an agricultural area of central Suffolk; it took advantage of the reduced construction cost enabled by the Light Railways Act 1896. It was launched with consi ...

branches. Withdrawals started in 1930, and by 1937 fifteen had been withdrawn, but there were no more retirements for ten years. In 1944 the five surviving locomotives were renumbered 8211–8215 in order of construction. These last five were withdrawn between 1947 and 1956, when the class became extinct.

References

Notes

Bibliography

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External links

— Great Eastern Railway Society
The Holden J65 (GER Class E22) 0-6-0T Locomotives
— LNER Encyclopedia {{LNER Locomotives Great Eastern Railway locomotives, E22 0-6-0T locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1889 Scrapped locomotives Standard gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain