GWR 79 Class

The GWR 79 Class was a series of inside-cylinder 0-6-0 goods tender locomotives built for the Great Western Railway from 1859, forming another grouping within the GWR's Victorian goods engine programme under Daniel Gooch and Joseph Armstrong. Like the closely related 69 Class, the 79 Class represents the GWR's standard goods motive power of the late 1850s and 1860s, part of the systematic provision of 0-6-0 goods locomotives for the growing freight requirements of the expanding GWR network.

The distinction between the various GWR Victorian goods engine classes — 69, 79, and their sub-variants — reflects largely numerical classification within the GWR's Victorian locomotive numbering system rather than fundamentally different locomotive types. All were inside-cylinder 0-6-0 tender goods engines of broadly similar specification, built to handle the mixed freight and mineral traffic of the GWR's growing freight business across its standard-gauge and (where relevant) broad-gauge routes in the West of England, South Wales, and the Midlands.

The 79 Class worked GWR goods services through the 1860s and 1870s before withdrawal as the fleet was modernised under Dean. None was preserved.