 This role had been performed by the ex-LSWR 'Jubilee' A12 0-4-2, which were approaching the end of their useful lives.During his last year as the Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the Southern Railway Richard Maunsell decided on an inside-cylinder 0-6-0 tender locomotive to undertake this role, in what was to become the Q Class of 1938.This was a relatively ‘old-fashioned’ design for the late 1930s, although each of Britain’s major railways built locomotives of this pattern until the 1940s.