Great Eastern Railway James Holden 'A55' or 'Decapod' class 0-10-0 Tank No. 20. Built at Stratford in 1902, rebuilt as an 0-8-0 in 1906 and withdrawn in 1913. A rare, if not unique, example of a locomoitve built solely to prove a point. Could a steam locomotive match the acceleration and haulage capacity of competitive electric trains and trams? It was the first ten-coupled British locomotive and the test was to accelerate a 320 ton train from a stand to 30 miles per hour in 30 seconds. This is 1.46 feet per second per second. The resullt with 335 tons was 1.4ft. feet per second in very windy weather. The point was proved and the experiment concluded with no further development of the type. Pointless?

© Steve Armitage Collection