Switcher locomotive

Switchers are geared to produce high torque but are restricted to low top speeds and have small diameter driving wheels.

The steeply-graded Quayside Branch in Newcastle upon Tyne was electrified by the North Eastern Railway in 1905, and two steeplecab locomotives were built to handle all traffic on the line.

Electric locomotives were also extensively employed for moving the coke cars at cokeworks, obtaining power from a side wire, as third rail or overhead line electrification would have been impractical.

These specialised locomotives were tall steeple-cab types not seen anywhere else, and operated on a short length of track between the ovens and the quenching tower.

Despite their ubiquity, very few have survived into preservation as there is very little scope of operating them due to their unique means of obtaining power, slow speed and the fact they greatly exceed the loading gauge of most railway lines.

[5] The Tyne and Wear Metro has three battery electric shunters built by Hunslet, which are used to haul engineering trains when the overhead supply is switched off.

Most were either side-tank or saddle-tank types, however in the usual departure from its neighbours' practice, the Great Western Railway used pannier tanks for shunting and branch line work, a practice which the Western Region of BR perpetuated until steam traction was phased out, with several examples joining a 9F as banking engines to assist locomotives on the notoriously arduous ascent of the Lickey Incline, replacing the LMS "Jinties" which had formerly carried out the task alongside "Big Bertha".

As diesel shunters began to appear in ever-increasing numbers, attempts were made by companies such as Sentinel to adapt the vertical boilers from their steam powered road vehicles for use in shunting locomotives, in order to compete with the newcomers.

Again, several have been preserved, but are mostly static displays, as heritage railways and museums lack the large source of high-pressure steam (such as a power station's boilers) needed to charge the locomotive's accumulator.

The use of shunting locomotives saw a sharp decline in Britain in the latter half of the 20th century, largely due to the contraction of the network, increased competition from road traffic and widespread adoption of train-load freight, with fixed rakes of wagons moving mainly bulk products between rapid-loading facilities, as opposed to thousands of sidings and goods depots feeding trains of assorted wagons into the marshalling yards.

For lightweight shunting of single wagons or short trains, two-axle shunters are common; in Germany these are known as Kleinlokomotive (small locomotive).