The company of Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. was known for manufacturing very robust small shunting and narrow-gauge tank locomotives. These engines mostly went to industrial plants, but also to some larger companies. An example of this was the “Alexandra” built in 1901 for the Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks and Railway. It was a six-coupled, standard-gauge shunter and bore the works number 911 from Barclay. It was also described by the Locomotive Magazine as being extremely stable and had a copper firebox, the material of which being manufactured to the quality standards in the production of artillery shells.

The Zwillinge (“twins”) were small tank locomotives that were built for the Bavarian and Prussian Heeresfeldbahnen (military field railways). What was special was that, in normal service, two technically identical, otherwise independent locomotives were coupled together back to back. The cab roofs were of different heights to allow for overlap. When the locomotives were used individually, they were also referred to as “Illing”. If necessary, an additional tender was attached.

More than 50 pairs were delivered to the Swakopmund-Windhuk state railway in German South West Africa, where the field railway construction command built a 600 mm gauge line through the Namib Desert. The Japanese Army Field Railway also received a total of 89 pairs in 1905 and 1906. Some Zwillinge from German South West Africa were also sold to Japan when the gauge was changed to Cape Gauge. Only a few examples were used for civilian purposes. The successor was the Brigadelokomotive, which, with four driving axles, was more powerful than a single Illing.

The class R 3/3 locomotives were small freight tank locomotives that were primarily intended for shunting operations and were therefore also given the designation “R”. They were almost identical to the D II^II, which had been built since the end of the nineteenth century. They were six-coupled saturated locomotives without carrying axles and with a Westinghouse air brake.

The first 15 locomotives were delivered in 1906 and a further three followed in 1913. After the founding of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the Bavarian group administration had further need and so the majority of production, 90 locomotives, was only delivered between 1921 and 1923. The latter had an axle load increased from 15 to 16 tonnes with otherwise identical performance data. When the locomotives of the pre-war variants were renumbered, they were assigned the class 89⁷ and the newer ones became 89⁸. Some remained in Austria after the Second World War, where they became class 789 while retaining their road numbers. The Polish state railway took over some of the locomotives from Silesia as Tkh5.

In Germany, they continued to be used by the Bundesbahn as well, so that almost all of them were still in service at the end of the 1950s. However, they were then taken out of service within a relatively short period of time, as larger numbers of diesel locomotives were now available for shunting service. The last locomotive was therefore taken out of service in 1964. 89 801, former number 4701, is the only surviving example today. It was restored to its original livery and lettering and was kept in the DB Museum Nuremberg until 2005. After a fire, the locomotive was refurbished in Koblenz and is now located there.

In 1904, Kerr Stuart delivered four 0-6-0T tank locomotives to the Buenos Aires & Pacific Railway which got the numbers 151 to 154. They had outside cylinders which were inclined and inside valve gear. What can be seen from the photo are the cow catchers on both ends to allow mainline running in both directions. Also striking is the American-style headlight in front of the chimney.

At the Danish State Railways, the class F comprised three different types of tank locomotives with a 0-6-0T wheel arrangement. The four examples of type I were originally tender locomotives built in 1873 by the British company Hawthorn, Leslie & Company for the Jysk-Fyrenske Jernbaner. In 1889 and 1890 they were converted into tank locomotives. Only eight examples belonged to type III, which were built by SLM in Winterthur in 1917 and delivered to Denmark after the end of the war. They were the only superheated steam engines in the series.

Type II accounted for by far the largest share with 120 units. It was unusual that these locomotives were built by different manufacturers in different countries over a very long period of time. From 1898, ten pieces were made by an Italian company Costruzioni Meccaniche di Saronno, which belonged to Maschinenfabrik Esslingen. Another 20 units from Breda (Italy), Hanomag and Henschel (Germany) and Smith, Mygind & Hüttemeier (Denmark) followed until 1903. Two further batches of 30 and 45 pieces each followed between 1909 and 1923 by Borsig and Hanomag (Germany), Frichs (Denmark) and Les Ateliers Métallurgiques Tubize (Belgium). Another 15 engines from Frichs followed in 1949.

The fact that 51 years after the first deliveries new locomotives were built in a technically almost unchanged design shows that even small tank locomotives with saturated steam were sufficient for shunting and that no more complex machines were required. Even the Allan valve gear was retained, which at that point had actually been out of date for a long time. The only changes were more modern buffers and a larger coal bunker. In the meantime, the existing locomotives had been fitted with air brakes instead of steam brakes. Nevertheless, they were phased out in the 1960s, since diesel locomotives were now available for shunting.

The Port of Durban's first shunter was procured by the Port Commission in 1879, but that commission was abolished in 1894. The tasks were later transferred to a seven-member commission, which belonged to the government of Natal. This again ordered a single six-coupled tank locomotive. This was also imported from Leeds, but this time by Hudswell, Clarke and Co.

The six-coupled engine was named after Edward Innes, who was the first Durban port engineer appointed by the old commission from 1881 until his death in 1887. It was a standard tank locomotive 

from a commercial builder without any special adjustments for the customer. In contrast to the “John Milne” it had side water tanks and significantly larger supplies, but was about the same in terms of empty weight. When the inventories of the three former colonial railways were recorded in 1912, the “Edward Innes” was still included. However, as it was listed as an internal port shunter, it did not appear in the South African Railways numbering plan. It was used until 1923 and was then immediately scrapped. It outlived the other two locomotives that were ordered after it: in 1902 a four-coupled locomotive with a saddle tank and named “Congella” and in 1904 a six-coupled locomotive from Hunslet named “Sir Albert”.

In 1877, a seven-man commission was set up in the colony of Natal for the administration of the port of Durban, which was to coordinate the further development of the systems and processes for the increasing transport volume. Locomotives from the Natal Government Railways were previously used on the port's tracks when required, but no own locomotives existed. For this reason, a single shunting locomotive with a 0-6-0T wheel arrangement was ordered from Hunslet in Leeds, which was delivered in 1879. It was named after John Milne, an engineer who played an important role in the port's history.

The locomotive weighed almost 20 tonnes, carried a maximum of 1,680 pounds of coal in the driver's cab and held 450 gallons of water in a saddle tank. It had 36-inch wheels and a very short wheelbase. It was in service in the port of Durban for many years and was only supplemented by a second locomotive around the turn of the century. It is no longer possible to determine exactly when its service life ended. However, this must have been no later than 1912, since it no longer appeared in the lists of the South African Railways and must therefore have been either sold or scrapped before then.

In 1902, the Port Authority of East London in South Africa had two shunting locomotives built by Hunslet in Leeds for the port facilities. The track systems there had a gauge of 3 ft 6 in, which was used on mainline railways throughout the Cape of Good Hope. These were light tank locomotives with a 0-6-0ST wheel arrangement and very small wheels and a comparatively long wheelbase. The axle load was unevenly distributed, amounting to 8 LT 2 cwt, 6 LT 5 cwt and 5 LT 7 cwt for the first, second and third axle respectively with the curb weight. Even when the locomotive was loaded, the distribution of the axle loads should have hardly changed, since the water on the boiler was in a saddle tank and only 15 cwt of coal could be carried at the back.

As they were the only locos in East London Harbour, they were numbered 1 and 2. When the port railways were incorporated into the Cape Government Railways on January 1, 1909, the locomotives were given the numbers 1027 and 1028. Just two years later, when the South African Union was founded, the locomotives came to the newly founded South African Railways. The company numbers were soon preceded by a zero, which meant that they were to be considered obsolete, but nevertheless remained in use. They remained so for more than two decades, until finally being phased out in the 1930s.