The
Claud Hamilton, particularly in its original GER blue livery, is widely considered one of the most elegant locomotive designs of the
pre-grouping era. In his 1955 history of the Great Eastern Railway,
Cecil J. Allen devotes a whole chapter to the class and noted that Of all the
locomotive designs that emerged from
Stratford Works during the reign of James Holden, the one destined to achieve the greatest fame, beyond question, was his Claud Hamilton type 4-4-0, of which the pioneer example, No. 1900
Claud Hamilton, took the rails in 1900. Although credited to James Holden, the
Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Eastern, Frederick Vernon Russell (Holden's Chief Designer) is thought to have contributed substantially to the design of the Claud Hamiltons; while researching his
Some Classic Locomotives of 1949, C.H. Ellis was informed by Russell that during the process of designing the locomotive "Mr Holden, by then a
valetudinarian was making a long recuperative stay in Egypt." The 4-4-0
inside cylinder locomotive included a number of features that were to appear on later Great Eastern locomotive classes, including a circular polished steel smokebox door surround (instead of the usual horizontal straps) and decorative splashers. Class pioneer No 1900
Claud Hamilton featuring red lining and connecting rods, copper chimney cap and GER coat of arms was much admired when it was exhibited at the
1900 Paris Exposition. The original S46
boiler had of heating surface, with a grate. The
cylinders were 19 x 26 in. with
flat valves placed below, operated by
Stephenson's motion. The
coupled wheels were in diameter. As built, the S46s were all
fired by oil, using Holden's patented oil-burning apparatus which used a bed of
fire brick, a supply of air fed from a pre-heater in the
smokebox and steam-powered injectors which sprayed atomised oil onto the firebed. The firebox was heated, and steam for the injectors initially generated, by burning coal before switching to oil. The oil burnt was a waste product of the GER's gasworks that produced
Pintsch gas for lighting its carriages. The GER had previously been fined for discharging this waste product into the
River Lea, and the railway was thus able to fuel its oil-burning locomotives at little extra cost. The first ten of the D56 types were also built as oil-burners, but during the 1900s the increasing use of electric lighting in carriages and growing industrial demand for fuel oil meant that it was no longer cost-effective to use it as a locomotive fuel. Holden had always intended that his oil-burning system would allow locomotives so fitted to be easily converted to burn coal if required, and all the S46s and D56s had been switched to coal-burning by the end of 1911. When oil prices were low or coal was in short supply due to
strike action some examples were re-fitted to burn oil for short periods but this was not done past 1927. Allen reports that Claud Hamiltons in their original state were capable of taking around 350 tons from
Liverpool Street to
North Walsham in under the booked time. No. 1882 with round-top boiler ran the in 156 min 60 sec. Even heavier trains were managed in the up direction: No. 1809 (
Belpaire boiler) took 400 tons up in 157 minutes 24 seconds. The S46 design was substantially modified in later incarnations, particularly with the introduction of a larger superheated boiler on the H88 designed by
Alfred John Hill. Most earlier members of the class were substantially modified by Hill or during the tenure of Sir
Nigel Gresley as CME of the
LNER from 1923. Two separate classes were also developed from the design of the Claud Hamilton; Holden's
Class F48 (constructed between 1900 and 1903) was essentially an 0-6-0 goods version of the S46 and the
Class S69 (built between 1911 and 1921) was a larger 4-6-0 version using many of the same design cues as the H88, built to replace the
Clauds on the heaviest express trains. ==Classification and numbering==