134 Class

The GER 134 Class was a group of ten 0-4-4 tank locomotives designed by Samuel W. Johnson for the Great Eastern Railway, built in 1872–73. They were among the last locomotives Johnson designed for the GER before he left to take up the Locomotive Superintendent post at the Midland Railway in 1873. On the GER, however, the pressing need was not for express speed but for suburban capacity.

The GER's London suburban network was expanding rapidly in the early 1870s. Liverpool Street station was still under construction (it opened in 1874), but the traffic volumes that would pour through it were already visible in the overcrowded services running through the predecessor terminus at Bishopsgate. Johnson's answer was a compact 0-4-4 tank engine: the trailing bogie gave good tracking at speed and spread the weight over more axles than a pure tank engine, while the side-tank configuration kept the overall length short enough for the tight suburban platform loops.

Ten locomotives were built under contract by Neilson & Co of Glasgow, numbered 134–143. They entered service in 1872–73, working the inner-suburban services that would soon intensify around Liverpool Street. The class had inside cylinders of 16 in × 22 in, 5 ft 4 in driving wheels, and a boiler pressure of approximately 140 psi. As newer and larger suburban tank designs followed in the late 1870s and 1880s, the 134s were displaced to lighter duties, and all had been withdrawn before the end of the nineteenth century. None was preserved.