South African Class 16A 4-6-2

The South African Railways Class 16A 4-6-2 was a pair of experimental four-cylinder simple expansion Pacific type steam locomotives, built in 1915 by the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow, Scotland, to a design by D.A. Hendrie, the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the railway. Numbered 851 and 852, they were delivered in November 1915 and were identical in most respects to the two-cylinder Class 16 that NBL had delivered a year earlier, with superheating, Walschaerts valve gear, Belpaire fireboxes and Type MP1 tenders. Hendrie arranged four equal in-line cylinders below the smokebox, which made for very smooth and fast running that crews liked, but with less tractive effort than the Class 16 and awkward access to the inner cylinders. The space on a Cape gauge locomotive prevented larger cylinders, so the design was never repeated. The two locomotives worked on the Reef, and the last was withdrawn and scrapped during 1944.