NZR P class (1876)

The P class was a class of two tank locomotives built to work on the government-owned national rail network of New Zealand in 1876. Their wheel arrangement was 0-6-0T under the Whyte notation system and they were initially ordered by the Otago Provincial Council, but they were soon incorporated into the national locomotive fleet when the provinces were abolished. Other examples of the P class were built for industrial service and never came under the ownership of the New Zealand Railways Department, though one worked on the Kaitangata Line.

The two P class locomotives owned by the Railways Department were known as Kiwi and Weka and they soon passed to the ownership of others, allowing the P classification to be used again in 1885. Weka was the first to leave the ownership of the Railways Department in 1882, when it was acquired by the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company, who used it for construction and maintenance purposes until 1898. It then came into the possession of the Manawatu County Council's Sanson Tramway, who operated it until 1922, when it passed into the ownership of a sawmill and was ultimately scrapped in 1932. Kiwi left the Railways Department's ownership a few years after Weka, just before the arrival of the second P class in 1885. It worked for a number of sawmilling companies throughout the North Island for over half a century, but was derelict in 1956.

NZR P class

NZR P class could refer to one of these classes of locomotives operated by New Zealand Railways:

NZR P class (1885)

The P class was a class of steam locomotives built to haul freight trains on the national rail network of New Zealand. The class consisted of ten individual locomotives ordered from the British company of Nasmyth, Wilson and Company in 1885, but miscommunications about the weight limitations imposed on the locomotives meant they did not start work until 1887. This debacle came at a time when the New Zealand Railways Department (NZR) was suffering from a lack of motive power to work on its rapidly expanding network and was part of what prompted a shift towards American and home-grown manufacturers.

The classification of this class as "P" was the first example of the re-use of a classification that had previously been used for an earlier class. The members of the P class of 1876 had been sold to private companies or the Public Works Department, leaving the classification unused. The Railways Department chose to assign it to this class, setting a pattern that was followed with other classes in years to come, with the most prominent example being the A class of 1906 re-using the classification of the A class of 1873.