South African Class 14C 4-8-2, 4th batch
class of 13 South African 4-8-2 locomotives
The South African Railways Class 14C 4-8-2 of 1922 was a steam locomotive.
In 1922, the South African Railways placed the fourth and last batch of thirteen Class 14C steam locomotives with a 4-8-2 Mountain type wheel arrangement in service to bring the total in the class to 73. All four batches had different maximum axle loadings. Through reboilerings, rebalancings and cylinder bushings during its service life, this single class eventually ended up as six distinct locomotive classes with two boiler types and a multitude of axle loading and boiler pressure configurations.
Manufacturer
In 1922, the last thirteen Class 14C locomotives were ordered from the Montreal Locomotive Works (MLW) in Canada. They were delivered in that same year and numbered in the range from 2026 to 2038. Of the four batches built which all differed in terms of maximum axle loading, weight on driving wheels and engine weight, the engines of 1922 were the heaviest.
The Class 14C was ordered at a time when further orders of the earlier Class 14 models were unobtainable from manufacturers in the United Kingdom. The Canadian manufacturer undertook to supply engines of equivalent power, wheelbase and weight, but to their own design. As a result, bar frames substituted plate frames and several other important modifications were made.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “South African Class 14C 4-8-2, 4th batch” is class of 13 South African 4-8-2 locomotives. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through South, African and Class, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Aug 4, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q1434080. The first chronological checks are 1922, 2026 and 2038.
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This entry incorporates text from “South African Class 14C 4-8-2, 4th batch” 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.