Although the Crampton locomotive enjoyed long popularity in France in general and with the Est in particular, it reached its limits in the late 1870s. Thus, Regray initially had seven locomotives made with 2-4-0 wheel arrangement. Since the Belpaire firebox had its rear end above the second driving axle and the 2.31 meter diameter wheels were still very large, the locomotives were referred to as “coupled Cramptons” or “super Cramptons”. On numbers 508 to 510, the firebox was pulled further forward so that it lay between the driving axles. The locomotives had double outside frames which held the cylinders between them.
After the first ten had been manufactured in the Est workshops at Épernay in 1878 and 1879, the next 32 were ordered from commercial suppliers. The numbers 511 to 522 came from Cail in Paris in 1881 and the 523 to 542 in 1882 from the Wiener Neustädter Lokomotivfabrik. Their wheels were only 2.10 meters tall and the cylinders were slightly smaller. They also featured a conventional firebox that was larger than the previous Belpaire firebox.
A third batch of 20 was built again at Épernay in 1884 and 1885. These were given a larger boiler, which exceeded the 100 square meter mark for the tube heating surface. This enabled them to achieve a boiler output that was greater than that of contemporary locomotives with a 2-4-2 or 4-4-0 wheel arrangement. Furthermore, they had received a larger tender that, in addition to the three tons of coal, could hold up to 13 cubic meters of water instead of the ten cubic meters of the older tenders. Tractive effort was later increased on 48 of the 52 locomotives in the last two batches by reducing the wheel diameter to 1.83 metres.
Numbers 508 and 509 were rebuilt to a Flaman boiler in 1888, which could hold a maximum number of smoke tubes with two barrels. Since the front axle was heavily loaded after the conversion, the carrying axle was replaced with a bogie. Since the results of the conversions did not justify the high effort, no other locomotives were converted in this way. The locomotives with smaller driving wheels were soon increasingly used in ordinary passenger service and were partly used until 1936. The first of the non-converted examples, on the other hand, had already been retired in 1906.
