GER T26

The GER Class T26 was a series of inside-cylinder 2-4-0 mixed-traffic locomotives designed by James Holden and built at Stratford Works from 1891, providing the GER with a versatile and capable mixed-traffic type suited to the secondary passenger and goods working on the East Anglian network outside the principal express main lines. The T26 occupied the niche below the T19 express class and above the Y14 0-6-0 goods class, handling the semi-fast passenger trains, branch passenger workings, and the lighter goods duties that formed a large proportion of GER traffic across Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire.

Holden designed the T26 with 5 ft 8 in coupled wheels — smaller than the T19's 7 ft express drivers — appropriate for the wider speed range of mixed-traffic working where the ability to handle a goods or branch passenger train at moderate speed was as important as express capability. The inside-cylinder layout and saturated parallel boiler followed Holden's standard practice, and the class was built in substantial numbers over the 1890s and 1900s as the GER expanded its mixed-traffic fleet.

The T26s gave exceptionally long service. Under the LNER from 1923 they were classified E4 and continued in mixed-traffic and branch working across the former GER network. Several survived into British Railways ownership and were not withdrawn until the late 1950s. One example, 490, is preserved at the North Norfolk Railway at Sheringham, where it works alongside the preserved Y14/J15 tender goods engine — together representing the core of Holden's GER locomotive fleet in the heritage sector.