At the turn of the 20th century, the railways in British India utilised numerous classes of locomotives of differing designs, and there was an urgent need of standardisation. A subcommittee of the British Engineering Standards Committee (BESA) therefore designed several standardised classes of locomotives between 1903 and 1910 in three successive editions, with the Class HT being a later addition to the third report of the BESA Standard in 1910.[2][3] The design was similar to the locomotives delivered in 1921 to the Bengal Nagpur Railway (BNR), which were made using parts shared with the other BESA locomotives.[4] The Class HT had the same cylinder dimensions as the HGS/HGC class freight locomotives, whereas the boiler was shared with the Class PT2-6-4T locomotives.[5]
During the 1920s, Beyer, Peacock & Co. delivered the HT class locomotives for the North Western Railway and the East Indian Railway. The HT class locomotives were used for heavy shunting until the 1980s. It is unlikely that any of the HT class were preserved.