The earliest locomotives of Isambard Kingdom Brunel Junior’s broad gauge Great Western Railway were described by E. L. Ahrons as “an extraordinary collection of freak locomotives” and none looked quite as freakish as those constructed by North East railway engineer Thomas Elliot Harrison. Brunel certainly kept a tight hold of their design – his instructions to the constructors of locomotives for the Great Western Railway (GWR) were for drawings of proposed engines to be sent to Brunel before construction, and during, if any amendments were to be made. They were to run at 30mph, have a piston speed of not more than 280ft per minute (relatively low and best adhered to by using large diameter driving wheels), and a maximum weight of ten and a half tons, with the locomotive being carried on six wheels, if weighing over eight tons. The reasons behind this, and other aspects of early GWR locomotives, are widely explored in The Reverend Canon Brian Arman’s encyclopædic The Broad Gauge Engines of the Great Western Railway Part 1: 1837-1840 (Lightmoor Press: Lydney, 2018); however, for the purposes of this article it is enough to surmise that these were based on Brunel’s belief that this would produce the best locomotives for his, hoped for, game-changing railway.
The two locomotives designed by Thomas Elliot Harrison for the GWR, and were the lightest locomotives supplied to Brunel’s instructions, although were still two tons over the maximum weight requirement. They were also notable for other reasons, including their bizarre appearance, lack of success and short service lives. Their unusual design is often described as done to adhere to Brunel’s stipulations; however, contemporary evidence gives the impression that they were instead designed following Harrison’s experience of locomotives on the Stanhope & Tyne which opened in 1834, of which he was resident engineer. Managing the locomotive fleet from the works at South Shields resulted in Harrison “seeming convinced, from his experience on the Stanhope and
