During the late 1870s, William Meikle had designed a pair of 4-4-0 locomotives and had them built at Williamstown Workshops.

These locomotives would be built using spare parts of engines from the Geelong & Melbourne Railway Company and were numbered 38 and 40 (later G class).

Meikle would develop upon this design and placed an order of 8 from the Phoenix Foundry of Ballarat in 1877.

One strange feature was the inexplicably small grate area.

[3] One tender from one of the H class locomotives is preserved at the Newport Railway Museum, attached to Crane No.