SECR Tiger Class

The SER Tiger Class was a series of inside-cylinder 2-4-0 passenger tender locomotives designed by James Cudworth for the South Eastern Railway and built from 1859, named after the wild animal in the Victorian tradition of giving railway locomotives dramatic names intended to convey power and speed. The Tiger Class represented a development within Cudworth's 2-4-0 passenger locomotive programme for the SER, providing the railway with capable and well-proportioned passenger engines for the semi-fast and secondary express services across the Kent network during the middle decades of Cudworth's long tenure at Ashford.

Cudworth's passenger locomotive programme during the 1850s and 1860s produced several related 2-4-0 classes — the Tiger, Canterbury, Europa, and others — that collectively provided the SER's passenger motive power across its range of service types, from the secondary stopping services on the rural Kent branches to the semi-fast expresses on the main lines to Folkestone and Dover. The Tiger Class sat in the middle of this range, suitable for semi-fast passenger working where the larger driving wheels and adequate boiler capacity of Cudworth's design gave reasonable speed and power for the moderately-graded SER routes through the Weald and across the North Downs.

After Cudworth's retirement in 1876, James Stirling's more modern designs progressively displaced all the Cudworth classes from main-line duties, and the Tiger Class was withdrawn in the late Victorian era. None was preserved.