The MGWR Class K was a

Midland Great Western Railway The Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR) was the third largest Irish gauge () railway company in Ireland. It was incorporated in 1845 and absorbed into the Great Southern Railways in 1924. At its peak the MGWR had a network of , making it Irela ...

(MGWR) designed by

Martin Atock Martin Atock, also formerly known as Martin Attock, was an English railway engineer, who is best known as the Locomotive Superintendent of the Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR) from 1872 to 1900. Life Atock was born in June 1834 in Presto ...

for passenger work and introduced from 1893. They replaced earlier

MGWR Class D The MGWR Class D were steam locomotives built in batches from 1873 to 1887 for the Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR) of Ireland to a Martin Atock design. Numbering 39 at their peak they were the standard MGWR passenger locomotive of their ...

locomotives that carried the same namesand numbers. The class was also known as the

Great Southern Railways The Great Southern Railways Company (often Great Southern Railways, or GSR) was an Irish company that from 1925 until 1945 owned and operated all railways that lay wholly within the Irish Free State (the present-day Republic of Ireland). The p ...

(GSR) 650 G2 class.

Locomotives

Design and historical development

The design was a progression of the

standard passenger locomotive and resulted in a design more powerful than the MGWR Class D-bogie

4-4-0 4-4-0 is a locomotive type with a classification that uses the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement and represents the arrangement: four leading wheels on two axles (usually in a leading bogie), four po ...

. They were rebuilt with superheated boilers from 1918 increasing their power still further and becoming one of the few if not only superheated 2-4-0 classes in the world.

Services

They were initially allocated to top expresses such at the ''limited mail'' with some of the heaviest requiring double heading. After the turn of the century they were displaced by types to secondary duties throughout the MGWR network but became mainly based around the

Sligo Sligo ( ; ga, Sligeach , meaning 'abounding in shells') is a coastal seaport and the county town of County Sligo, Ireland, within the western province of Connacht. With a population of approximately 20,000 in 2016, it is the List of urban areas ...

line in the GSR/CIÉ era. On the

Achill Achill Island (; ga, Acaill, Oileán Acla) in County Mayo is the largest of the Irish isles, and is situated off the west coast of Ireland. It has a population of 2,594. Its area is . Achill is attached to the mainland by Michael Davitt Brid ...

line they would be brought in for heavier trains particular after 6 coupled locomotives were banned after 1925 on that branch. They remained active and useful into the 1950s with the last withdrawal in 1963. The locomotive class was also noted for working on the

Ballaghaderreen branch line The Ballaghaderreen branch line connected Ballaghaderreen railway station to Kilfree Junction railway station, Kilfree Junction on the Dublin to Sligo Mac Diarmada railway station, Sligo main line. It opened in 1874 and closed in 1963. History ...

in its final years.

Accidents and Incidents

Several of the class were damaged in civil war incidents in 1922/23. In particular No. 20 ''Speedy'' was destroyed at Killala on 3 February 1923.

References

{{Ireland Steam Locomotives 2-4-0 locomotives 5 ft 3 in gauge locomotives K Railway locomotives introduced in 1893 Scrapped locomotives Steam locomotives of Ireland