South African Class 15F 4-8-2
class of 255 South African 4-8-2 locomotives
The South African Railways Class 15F 4-8-2 of 1938 is a steam locomotive.
The Class 15F was the most numerous steam locomotive class in South African Railways service. Between 1938 and 1948, 255 of these locomotives with a 4-8-2 Mountain type wheel arrangement entered service.
Manufacturers
The Class 15F 4-8-2 Mountain type steam locomotive was designed by W.A.J. Day, Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the South African Railways (SAR) from 1936 to 1939, based on the design of the Class 15E by his predecessor, Allan Griffiths Watson, and later modified again by his successor, M.M. Loubser. It was built in five batches by four locomotive manufacturers in Germany and the United Kingdom over a period of ten years spanning World War II.
The first 21 were built in Germany in 1938. Seven were delivered by Berliner Maschinenbau, numbered in the range from 2902 to 2908, and fourteen by Henschel & Son, numbered in the range from 2909 to 2922.
Another 44 were built by the North British Locomotive Company (NBL) of Glasgow in 1938. They were delivered in 1939, numbered in the range from 2923 to 2966.
Locomotive building was interrupted by World War II, but because of a critical motive power shortage that developed in South Africa during the war, manufacturing of the Class 15F was resumed even before hostilities had ceased. In 1944, production started on thirty locomotives by Beyer, Peacock & Company (BP), delivered later that same year and numbered in the range from 2967 to 2996.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7565472. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1948, 1936 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “South African Class 15F 4-8-2” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.