The North Eastern Railway (NER) required a powerful engine to handle the increasing size of freight trains on their network. The NER P2 design came into existence and stood out from anything which had previous been built by the NER with a massive 5ft 6in diameter boiler. 30 were built in 1904/05 at Darlington and a further 20 built in 1905 in Gateshead. The design was modified in 1906 to produce the NER P3 later J27 design. The J26 was mainly used on goods traffic. None of the 50 J26 survived into preservation with the final J26 locomotives being withdrawn in 1962.