The Statens Järnvägar (SJ; Swedish State Railways) Class G11 was a class of two ex- British War Department Austerity 2-8-0

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, 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 the ...

(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 locomotive A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine. Several types of diesel locomotives have been developed, differing mainly in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving whee ...

s, 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 Halmstad () is a port, university, industrial and recreational city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Socia ...

- Nässjö 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 Both were withdrawn in the 1960s and placed in the strategic reserve.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 and ...

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 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 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 ...

No. 90733", numbered 1 higher than the last of the

BR ex-WD Austerity 2-8-0 The British Railways (BR) ex-WD Austerity 2-8-0 was a class of 733 2-8-0 steam locomotives designed for heavy freight. These locomotives of the WD Austerity 2-8-0 type had been constructed by the War Department as war locomotives 1943-1945. A ...

References

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