 During the first thirteen years of his tenure at the Great Eastern Railway Holden's locomotive designs did not utilise bogies.His predecessors had vacillated between 0-4-4 and 2-4-2 tanks for suburban and branch services, and between both 2-2-2 and 4-2-2, and 2-4-0 and 4-4-0 tender types for express passenger service, but Holden's designs had single axles with side-play rather than a leading or trailing bogie.At the beginning of his tenure the GER possessed some 75 bogie single or four-coupled engines, but by the end of 1897 their number had dwindled to twelve.