LSWR 0395 Class

The LSWR 0395 Class was a series of 70 inside-cylinder 0-6-0 goods tender locomotives designed by William Adams, Locomotive Superintendent of the London and South Western Railway from 1878 to 1895, and built at Nine Elms Works and by Beyer Peacock of Manchester between 1881 and 1886. Named after the first locomotive number in the class, the 0395 Class provided the LSWR with a capable and reliable standard goods engine for the railway's varied freight operations across the south of England and was one of Adams's most successful designs.

Adams brought to the LSWR a methodical and technically accomplished approach to locomotive design: he had previously served as Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Eastern Railway and brought GER design practices to Nine Elms, including the use of the Adams bogie — a swivelling four-wheel leading truck of his own design that became standard practice on many British railways — in his passenger locomotive designs. For the 0395 goods class he specified a more straightforward inside-cylinder 0-6-0 configuration suited to the LSWR's goods traffic: agricultural produce from Hampshire and Dorset, Southampton Docks traffic, Portsmouth naval stores, and the general merchandise of the prosperous southern English counties the LSWR served.

In service the 0395 Class proved exactly what the LSWR needed: robust, economical, and reliable on the varied gradients of the LSWR's main and secondary lines. Several examples were requisitioned for military service in the First World War, working on the Inland Waterways & Docks operations and subsequently in Palestine and Mesopotamia with the British army, giving the class an unexpected military career on the other side of the world. Some of these overseas examples never returned to Britain. One example, No. 30564, is preserved at the Bluebell Railway, representing both the Adams goods tradition and the LSWR's part in the Great War railway operations.