Their simple, bare design easily navigated the tight curves and poor quality track which they ran on.

The absence of a rear bunker and the small size of the cab provided the driver with a clear view of the buffer bar when reversing onto a train.

The locos were originally fitted with dumb buffers, but these were changed for small round buffers during the 1930s,[1] some also gaining vacuum brakes during this period; only hand and steam brakes were fitted when built.

Locomotives operating at Tyne Dock were altered to take shunting poles on each corner of the loco, giving the ability to pull a wagon on an adjacent line.

[3] Dock work was hit hard by the depression, and between 1929 and 1932 the sixteen locomotives which made up the first two batches delivered were withdrawn, nine being sold to industrial use while the remainder were scrapped.