One of the founding members of the Isle of Wight Central was the Cowes and Newport Railway, which had been established in 1859 and operated a 4.5 mile line to the north of the line along the River Medina. In 1970 Black, Hawthorn & Co. in Gateshead-on-Tyne built a small tank locomotive with a saddle tank, which was later to be number 3 in the combined railway company.

State after the rebuild where a cab was added

Locomotive Magazine, December 1921

After the Medina Wharf was built in 1877 and 1878, the engine spent much of its life there as a shunter. Later, a rebuild took place, in which the simple weather protection was replaced by a driver's cab. When passenger service with steam rail motors was opened up for Medina Wharf staff, the “Mill Hill” was used along with a six-axle passenger car as backup. The locomotive was decommissioned in 1913 and sold in 1918 to Holloway Bros. who operated a dock at Middlesbrough.

No. 212

Locomotive Magazine, August 1897

No. 214 after being renumbered to 369 in May 1878

Locomotive Magazine, October 1897

No. 230

Locomotive Magazine, November 1897

No. 231

collection Dave Searle

No. 231

Locomotive Magazine, December 1897

A total of ten small tank locomotives were grouped together under the name "South London Tanks", which showed a few differences and were built by Craven for operation in the southern suburbs of London. The first was number 212, built in July 1865 and intended for the line between South Croydon and Victoria station. It had an inner frame with inside cylinders and water tanks on the sides and under the cab. Since the tanks had a total capacity of only 645 gallons, in July 1868 another 155 gallon tank was integrated into the front of the frame, extending brlow the cylinders.

Also in July 1865 followed number 213, which now had an outer frame and belonged to a standard Craven type. It was slightly heavier than the 212, but only had a cylinder diameter of 15 instead of 16 inches. The 214 and 215 followed in November, which had a total of three water tanks in the frame instead of the side tanks. Otherwise they had a lot in common with the 213. In April 1866 Nos. 17 and 216 to 218 were built, again largely the identical to the 213 and having side tanks but with larger water and coal supplies.

Number 230, which was completed in October 1866, showed greater differences. The wheel sets were hinged in an inner frame, while there was still an outer subframe. It had a larger boiler and, like the 212, a cylinder diameter of 16 inches. The 231 delivered in the same month showed even greater differences, which had a bogie instead of a trailing axle due to significantly increased stocks.

Most engines have been renumbered over the course of their service life. There were no major modifications to the locomotives. However, they were only expected to have a relatively short life, as all were scrapped in the first half of the 1880s.

The Royal Saxon State Railways combined two types of local railway tank locomotives as IIIb T, which had the wheel arrangement 0-4-2T and were similar in structure. Another similarity was the fact that about half of the engines had originally been procured by very short-lived private railways, but later came to the state railways.

A series was ordered in 1875 by the Muldenthal railway company from Schwartzkopff in Berlin. The locomotives were used on the 83 km long branch line between Glauchau and Wurzen until the line and vehicles were ceded to the state railways in 1878 due to financial difficulties. Further locomotives were ordered by the Chemnitz-Aue-Adorfer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft from the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik in Chemnitz. Their area of operation was the 115 km long line from Chemnitz via Aue to Adorf, as well as a 9 km long branch line from Zwotental to Klingenthal. This railway company was merged into the state railways in 1876 after only four years of existence.

Between 1889 and 1892, the Saxon State Railways had twenty more units made in three series, which were more powerful than their predecessors. They were characterized by a boiler pressure of ten instead of nine bars and were about 20 cm longer than their predecessors. A total of 42 pieces of the series now known as IIIb T were created. The Reichsbahn took over nine more of these locomotives, which became the class 98⁷². They were decommissioned by 1929, only one remained in service until 1934 as a works locomotive in the Reichsbahn repair shop in Leipzig.

The “Olomana” is a small tank locomotive shipped to Hawaii from Baldwin in 1883 and used by the Waimanalo Sugar Co. to haul sugar cane from the plantations to the refinery. It is generally considered the third self-propelled vehicle in Hawaii. It had the wheel arrangement 0-4-2T and a saddle tank. The initially coal-fired locomotive was converted to oil-firing in 1928 after an unsuccessful attempt to use sugar cane as fuel. In 1944 it and its sisters were retired and replaced with trucks.

The locomotive only became famous after it returned to the US mainland in 1948. It came to Hollywood and was used on the private Grizzly Flats Railroad. In 1952 and 1953 it was first restored and converted to wood firing. In the following time it was operated several times by Walt Disney and influenced him noticeably. In 1977 it was donated to the Smithsonian Museum, from where it came to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg in 1999.