# LCDR Europa class

The LCDR C class or Europa Class was a class of 2-4-0 steam locomotives of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR). The class was designed by William Martley and introduced in 1873, intended for the heaviest express services between London and Dover.

## History

The LCDR was successful in winning a government contract for the delivery of British mails to the Continent from the South Eastern Railway (SER) in 1873 and required a new class of locomotives for the mail trains as the punctuality of these services was essential to its retention. William Martley the locomotive superintendent of the railway designed the class and obtained permission for four locomotives to be built by Sharp, Stewart and Company at a cost of £2,930 per locomotive to be delivered by October 1873. These were named Europa, Asia, Africa and America but, like other LCDR locomotives built before 1875, were unnumbered when new.
The locomotives performed well and Martley therefore sought authority to purchase a further five, but this request was refused. He was however granted authority to build the locomotives at the company’s own Longhedge Railway Works in 1874. Work on two of these had barely started at the time of Martley’s death in the same year. Construction of these was halted, but eventually restarted and completed in 1876 by Martley’s successor William Kirtley, although the order for the three remaining examples was cancelled. The boilers for these three, which had been supplied by Nasmyth, Wilson & Co. in late 1875, were later used by Kirtley for other purposes.
The two new locomotives were numbered 57 and 58; in the meantime, the first four members of the class were numbered 53-56 in January 1875, although their names were retained until they were reboilered in 1892. These numbers were increased by 459 to become 512–517 following the amalgamation of the LCDR and SER to become the South Eastern and Chatham Railway in 1899. Under William Kirtley's classification scheme the locomotives became the 'C class'.
| Name | Builder | Works no. | Built | LCDR Number | SECR Number | Withdrawn |
| Europa | Sharp Stewart | 2331 | September 1873 | 53 | 512 | April 1909 |
| Asia | Sharp Stewart | 2332 | September 1873 | 54 | 513 | February 1909 |
| Africa | Sharp Stewart | 2333 | October 1873 | 55 | 514 | January 1908 |
| America | Sharp Stewart | 2334 | October 1873 | 56 | 515 | December 1907 |
| India | Longhedge | 4 | August 1876 | 57 | 516 | May 1908 |
| Ethiopia | Longhedge | 5 | November 1876 | 58 | 517 | February 1909 |
| Agulhas | Longhedge | (Cancelled) | (Cancelled) | — | — | — |
| Malabar | Longhedge | (Cancelled) | (Cancelled) | — | — | — |
| Coromandel | Longhedge | (Cancelled) | (Cancelled) | — | — | — |

## Use

The class was used on both the Dover-Calais boat trains and on new services to Flushing via Queenborough Pier after May 1876. After 1876 they were replaced on the heaviest services by the LCDR M class 4-4-0, although they continued to be used on express services until the turn of the century and were considered worthy of re-boilering between 1890 and 1892.

## Withdrawal

The class was withdrawn and scrapped between December 1907 April 1909. The four earliest examples had each accumulated more than one million miles by then.