BR Standard Class 3MT

The BR Standard Class 3MT 2-6-0 was a series of twenty 2-6-0 Mogul locomotives designed by Robert Riddles and built at Swindon Works in 1954, occupying the middle ground between the lightweight Class 2 and the more powerful Class 4 in the BR Standard Mogul family. The Class 3 was intended for medium-weight secondary passenger and goods work on routes where the Class 2's modest power was insufficient but the Class 4's higher axle loading was a constraint. In practice only twenty were built — a small number compared to the eighty-plus examples of the Class 4 Mogul — reflecting the relatively narrow niche the Class 3 occupied.

The Class 3 2-6-0 shared the external family resemblance of the other Riddles Moguls: outside cylinders, BR Standard taper boiler, and the clean functional styling that characterised all the Standard designs. The 5 ft 3 in coupled wheels gave a reasonable balance between tractive effort and speed for the mixed secondary duties the class was assigned. Swindon's construction of what was essentially a Riddles design rather than a Churchward-derived type reflected the integrated approach to locomotive building across BR workshops that nationalisation had made possible.

The Class 3 Moguls worked secondary and semi-fast passenger duties principally in the Southern and Scottish Regions. Their short production run and the relatively rapid onset of diesel replacement meant the class had a brief working life; the last examples were withdrawn by 1967. None of the 20 locomotives in the class was preserved: all were withdrawn between 1966 and July 1967 and scrapped by 1968. 77014, sometimes wrongly reported as preserved, was withdrawn in July 1967 and scrapped in February 1968 at Bird's scrapyard, Risca.