The Great Eastern Railway's P43 class was the penultimate single-driver express locomotive built in Britain, before the GCR Class 13. Although the GER was already using four-coupled passenger locomotives, its seven-foot wheels were used to pull light express trains. The usual area of application included the fastest possible transport of wealthy customers from the City of London to the North Sea coast in Norfolk.

Its developer James Holden is considered one of the pioneers of oil firing, and so the P43 also had oil firing. This could be seen in the different shape of the tender, which was also prepared for conversion to coal. As an oil tender, it held 715 gallons of oil and 2,790 gallons of water. The necessary pre-heating of the oil was accomplished by feeding the oil in the tender through a tube through which the exhaust steam from the brake system ejector was also fed.

Schematic drawing

Locomotive Magazine, June 1912

Even if they had slightly smaller driving wheels compared to other British singles and the adhesive weight was low for the time around the turn of the century, they were initially able to hold their own with their light trains on the relatively flat route. Nevertheless, the first two of the ten locomotives were retired in 1907, followed by five in 1908, one in 1909 and the last two in 1910. They were replaced by the 4-4-0 locomotives of classes S45, D56 and H88, also developed by Holden, which were called “Claud Hamilton”.