To cope with the anticipated traffic on the new Cape gauge line which was being built inland from Durban to Pietermaritzburg, Milne placed an order for seven new 2-6-0T locomotives.

[2][3][5][6] The first two locomotives, along with thirty open trucks and ten passenger carriages, were landed off the ship Empress of India on 14 December 1877.

[2] They had round-topped copper fireboxes, the crowns of which were supported by direct stays of Yorkshire iron which were screwed and riveted over at both ends.

The buffing and drawgear were centrally arranged, with Johnston link-and-pin couplers without buffers instead of the buffers-and-chain which had been used on the three broad gauge Natal Railway Company locomotives.

With the advent of Welsh coal, the balloon smokestacks of the first five engines were replaced by tall flared chimneys, with the spark arrester inside the smokebox.

Although the Resident Engineer of the new NGR had taken over the new Cape Gauge line between Point and Durban from the contractors in February 1878 and had used this track regularly for goods traffic since that date, the broad gauge between Point, Durban and Umgeni was only abandoned on Saturday 11 May of that year.

The work in connection with regauging it to the new Cape gauge commenced immediately after the arrival of the last train on the Saturday evening and was completed late on Sunday night.

The sale must have taken place between 1894, when the mine was registered, and 1905, since the locomotive does not appear in the NGR's 1904 year-end report.

Photographic evidence also shows that it had not been modified in respect of the extended smokebox and sand dome.

By the time this locomotive was involved in a bad accident which resulted in it having to be scrapped c. 1970, it had been in service for more than ninety years.