The

Statens Järnvägar The Swedish State Railways ( sv, Statens Järnvägar) or SJ, originally the Royal Railway Board ( sv, Kungl. Järnvägsstyrelsen), was the former government agency responsible for operating the state-owned railways in Sweden. It was created i ...

(SJ; Swedish State Railways) Class G11 was a class of two ex-

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

War Department War Department may refer to: * War Department (United Kingdom) * United States Department of War (1789–1947) See also * War Office, a former department of the British Government * Ministry of defence * Ministry of War * Ministry of Defence * D ...

Austerity 2-8-0 steam locomotives, numbered 1930 and 1931. They were both purchased in 1953 from

Nederlandse Spoorwegen Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS; ; en, "Dutch Railways") is the principal passenger railway operator in the Netherlands. It is a Dutch state-owned company founded in 1938. The Dutch rail network is one of the busiest in the European Union, and t ...

(NS; Dutch Railways). SJ purchased these locomotives to evaluate if they could serve as at good replacement for the locomotives they had obtained through the nationalization of the private railways during the 1940s. It was possible to purchase these locomotives as surplus material quite cheaply. The trials were less than satisfactory though, and with the rapid advances in the technology of diesel locomotives, no further purchases of this type of locomotives were made by SJ.

Overview

The two locomotives were numbered 1930 and 1931. Both had been transferred to Nederlandse Spoorwegen in 1945. In Sweden the locomotives were altered. Their chimneys, the originals of which had been replaced with taller chimneys by the Dutch, were cut down. Their cabs were replaced with fully enclosed cabs. Their tenders were cut down from 8-wheel to 6-wheel, and so on. The locomotives were primarily used in south-west Sweden on the Halmstad-

Nässjö Nässjö () is a locality and the seat of Nässjö Municipality, Jönköping County, Sweden with 16,678 inhabitants in 2010. History For many years, Nässjö was a rural village with agriculture as the dominant occupation. The turning point was t ...

line. Both were withdrawn in the 1960s and placed in the strategic reserve. No. 1931 was bought by a group from the

Keighley and Worth Valley Railway The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway is a heritage railway line in the Worth Valley, West Yorkshire, England, which runs from Keighley to Oxenhope. It connects to the National Rail network at Keighley railway station. History Inception ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and repatriated in 1973. There were negotiations for the

Nene Valley Railway The Nene Valley Railway (NVR) is a preserved railway in Cambridgeshire, England, running between Peterborough Nene Valley and Yarwell Junction. The line is in length. There are stations at each terminus, and three stops en route: Orton Mere, ...

to purchase No. 1930, which would have been numbered as No. 90734 had it not been scrapped, but it was inadvertently scrapped, leaving No. 1931 as the only surviving WD Austerity 2-8-0. No. 1931 ran in a slightly modified conditions between 1973 and 1976. Locomotive 1931 finished its overhaul in 2007 which restored it to its original condition as " British Railways No. 90733", numbered 1 higher than the last of the BR ex-WD Austerity 2-8-0s.

References

{{Swedish railway stock G11 2-8-0 locomotives Standard gauge locomotives of Sweden Standard gauge locomotives of the Netherlands Individual locomotives of Sweden