The first Locomotive, Carriage & Wagon Superintendent for the South Eastern and Chatham Railway was H.S. Wainwright who produced a series of successful and elegant designs at Ashford. Wainwright's tender engines built at Ashford included 0-6-0 freight locomotives of the 'C' class, and the 4-4-0 passenger engines of the 'D' and 'E' classes. His tank engines built at the works included the versatile and long-lived 0-4-4 'H' class, the larger 0-6-4 'J' class and the diminutive 0-6-0 tank engines of the 'P' class. Wainwright was followed by Richard Maunsell, who introduced the ultimately unsuccessful 'K' class 2-6-4 mixed traffic tank locomotives (which were later rebuilt into 2-6-0 tender locomotives), and the useful 'N' class 2-6-0 mixed traffic locomotives in 1917.
