The four Tornado class locomotives were

broad gauge A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , more known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union countries ...

locomotives operated on the South Devon Railway and associated railways. They were designed for goods trains but were also used on passenger trains when required. They were ordered by Evans and Geach who were contracted to operate the railway's locomotives. They were designed by Daniel Gooch and based on his Banking Class locomotives built for the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

who had previously operated the South Devon Railway, and built by the Vulcan Foundry. On 1 February 1876 the South Devon Railway was amalgamated with the Great Western Railway, the locomotives were given numbers by their new owners but continued to carry their names too. Three similar locomotives were built for the Vale of Neath Railway in 1854. Some of these could be found working on the South Devon lines after the 1876 amalgamation.

Locomotives

* ''Goliah'' (1855 – 1885) GWR no. 2141 :This locomotive was named after a biblical character,

Goliath Goliath ( ) was a Philistines, Philistine giant in the Book of Samuel. Descriptions of Goliath's giant, immense stature vary among biblical sources, with texts describing him as either or tall. According to the text, Goliath issued a challen ...

. * ''Sampson'' (1855 – 1884) GWR no. 2142 :This locomotive was named after

Samson SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...

, a biblical character associated with Goliath. * ''Tornado'' (1854 – 1884) GWR no. 2139 :On 13 March 1860 ''Tornado'' was working a goods train at

Totnes Totnes ( or ) is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England, within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is about west of Paignton, about west-southwest of Torquay and ab ...

when its boiler exploded, killing the driver. It was also notorious for being the locomotive of a runaway

china clay Kaolinite ( ; also called kaolin) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedron, tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen ...

train at Burngullow on the

Cornwall Railway The Cornwall Railway was a broad gauge railway from Plymouth in Devon to Falmouth, Cornwall, Falmouth in Cornwall, England, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was constantly beset with shortage of capital for the construct ...

on 29 October 1872. :A

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...

is a kind of wind. * ''Volcano'' (1854 – 1877) GWR no. 2140 :A

volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most oft ...

is a mountain that erupts magma.

References

* * * * * * Railway company records at The National Archives {{SDR Locomotives Broad gauge (7 feet) railway locomotives 0-6-0ST locomotives Vulcan Foundry locomotives

Tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...

Railway locomotives introduced in 1854