Overview While to some extent his work consisted in improving the designs of his predecessors, Holden was responsible for several designs of his own. He completely reorganised
Stratford Works, which, together with a considerable degree of standardisation, brought Stratford to an exceptionally high position among British locomotive works in the speed and efficiency of its locomotive production. Some of the extensively-built locomotive classes may not have been outstanding in performance on the road, or in fuel economy, but they were rugged in design and with their massive working parts were reliable and easy to maintain.
Wheel arrangements During the first thirteen years of his tenure at the
Great Eastern Railway Holden's locomotive designs did not utilise
bogies. His predecessors had vacillated between
0-4-4 and
2-4-2 tanks for suburban and branch services, and between both
2-2-2 and
4-2-2, and
2-4-0 and
4-4-0 tender types for express passenger service, but Holden's designs had single axles with side-play rather than a leading or trailing bogie. At the beginning of his tenure the GER possessed some 75 bogie single or four-coupled engines, but by the end of 1897 their number had dwindled to twelve. Then, just as the bogie appeared to be doomed to extinction on the GER, Holden introduced over the next three years new 4-2-2 and 4-4-0 passenger and 0-4-4 tank classes.
Boiler, cab, valve gear Holden continued for thirteen years to fit his engines with stovepipe
chimneys, and also with
Thomas Worsdell's capacious cab, with its gracefully curved side-sheets. Although for a time he continued with the Worsdell three-ring boiler barrel, with the dome on the middle ring, before long he designed a two-ring boiler with the dome on the front ring, immediately behind the chimney. He substituted
Stephenson link-motion for the
Joy valve gear preferred by Worsdell.
Locomotive classes In Holden's first year at Stratford Works four separate locomotive classes were put in hand. These were 2-4-2 tanks,
0-6-0 tanks, 0-6-0 freight engines, and the first of a new 2-4-0 express passenger type. This latter was No. 710, prototype of the well-known
T19 Class, which was to prove the mainstay of Great Eastern main line passenger service for many years. While the new engine closely resembled one of the
Worsdell Class G14s, the boiler was slightly larger, with as against heating surface, and as compared with grate area; cylinders were , and weight in working order . Building of these engines continued for eleven years, from 1886 to 1897, until there were 110 of them in all. The first sixty, numbered from 710 to 779 inclusive, had the older three-ring boiler with the dome on the middle ring and a pressure of . In 1892 there followed Nos. 700 to 709 and 781 to 790, in 1893 Nos. 1010 to 1019, in 1895 Nos. 1020 to 1029, and in 1897 Nos. 1030 to 1039, with the two-ring boiler and the dome well forward. Not until the last ten did the boiler pressure rise to , but in course of time all the engines of the class were fitted with two-ring boilers.
Suburban passenger tanks Six-coupled In 1889 one of Holden's shunting tanks engines was fitted with the
Westinghouse brake and evaluated on passenger working. The 1889 experiment resulted in eighty of these tanks, slightly larger than
Class T18 and classified as
GER Class R24, being turned out from 1890 to 1896. They took over the whole of the suburban working between
Liverpool Street and
Chingford,
Enfield Town, and
Palace Gates. Twenty shunters of the same type emerged in 1890 and 1891. In addition, in 1889 and 1893, Holden built twenty smaller 0-6-0 tanks (
Class E22) with cylinders and a weight of , for light branch work. Some of the latter worked for years between
Fenchurch Street and
Blackwall with part of their side rods removed, so converting them to the 2-4-0 wheel arrangement. The R24 0-6-0s with their packed trains of 15 four-wheelers could reach speeds of up to sixty miles an hour. When the intensive suburban service of 1920 was introduced reliance was still placed largely on these 0-6-0s to maintain the new split-second timings, and they were quite equal to the task. By then their numbers had been further reinforced by the twenty built in 1900 and 1901 with
boilers, and by a further twenty turned out in 1904, the latter with pressure, larger boilers giving heating surface and grate area, and side-tanks holding , which increased the weight to . Those built from 1912 onwards were decorated with flared-top chimneys, in place of stovepipes, and the high-roofed cab with side-windows which was now the Holden standard.
Ten-coupled The
Decapod developed mainly under Chief Draughtsman Frederick Vernon Russell was an extraordinary endeavour to develop a steam locomotive which could perform at the level of
electric traction. It was built in 1902 to forestall an imminent scheme for an
electrified railway out of London to suburbs served by the GER. Since the proponents of the scheme had a slogan about
electric trains accelerating to thirty miles an hour in thirty seconds, Holden resolved to obtain the same performance with steam traction. A massive boiler with
Wootten firebox, three cylinders each with its own
blastpipe cone, and ten smallish driving wheels ensured a lively acceleration. On trial it did rather better than in thirty seconds, accelerating at 1.46 ft/s² (0.45 m/s²): This performance put an end to the electrification scheme even though (as Holden had known all the time) the regular use of so massive a machine would never have been permitted by the
civil engineer.
Oil fuel and water-scoops Holden developed
oil-burning initially in stationary boilers at Stratford Works, but subsequently on suburban locomotives and finally on express locomotives. Holden's first
oil burner of 1893,
Petrolea, was a
class T19 2-4-0 and burned waste oil that the Railway had previously been discharging into the
River Lea. It was largely inspired by
Thomas Urquhart's success in
Russia, and was eventually followed by more than a hundred additional oil-burners. When Holden introduced his oil-burning equipment,
Nos. 712 and 759 to 767 inclusive were fitted with it, and their tenders acquired on top two cylindrical tanks, arranged longitudinally, to accommodate the oil fuel; No. 760 received the name
Petrolea in honour of this change. Nos. 762 to 767 and 1030 to 1039 also had their tenders fitted with water-scoops in preparation for the non-stop running over the 130 miles between
Liverpool Street and
North Walsham of the summer
Cromer Express (later the
Norfolk Coast Express), which began on 1 July 1897,
water-troughs having been laid down both at
Halifax Junction,
Ipswich, and at
Tivetshall St. Mary for this purpose. The engine chosen for the inaugural run was No. 1037. However, oil burners were progressively discarded by the Great Eastern Railway due to the additional fuel costs. Holden oil burners were briefly fitted used on steam locomotives by various companies, including the
Caledonian Railway during the
national coal strike of 1912.
Miscellaneous Distinguished services rendered by
T19 Class 2-4-0s included the working of the funeral train of the late
Duke of Clarence from
King's Lynn to
Windsor by No. 755 on 28 January 1892, and of the honeymoon train of the
Duke and
Duchess of York. His most lasting contribution was that of
standardization which
Gresley wisely did not disrupt leaving the
Great Eastern lines with standard locomotives many of which lasted to the end of steam, almost to the end of much railway activity in
East Anglia. == List of locomotive classes ==