Upon completion, she departed the factory on 15 April 1830, being shipped by sea from Newcastle to Whitstable.
On 30 May 1830, ‘’Invicta’’ hauled the inaugural train of the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway into Whitstable Harbour station.
For this maiden journey, the locomotive was driven by Edward Fletcher, who later became the locomotive superintendent of the North Eastern Railway. ‘’
Invicta’’ was the sole locomotive to be used on the line at the time of its opening.

Initial operations using ‘’Invicta’’ saw it routed along the northern three kilometres of the Canterbury & Whitstable line; however, it soon became apparent that the locomotive lacked the power at any speed to haul trains up the steep incline along Church Street when departing Whitstable.
An alternative working practice was adopted to address this power shortage, starting in 1832; instead, trains were pulled up the incline using a stationary engine, which was reportedly capable of generating up to 11.2kW, that was positioned at the top of the slope, while ‘’Invicta’’ was restricted to worked the 1.6km of track at South Street, which was relatively level.

During 1836, it was decided to perform a number of design modifications to ‘’Invicta’’.
These involved the addition of another ring section to the boiler in place of the firebox, and the replacement of the original multi-tube boiler with a single flue boiler; this last change proved to be a retrograde step, even by that time, it had been generally accepted that multi-tube boilers were in fact more efficient than their single-tube counterparts.
Reportedly, these changes had a negative impact on the locomotive’s performance, often failing to produce a sufficient head of steam as to allow ‘’Invicta’’ to perform the services desired of it.
Largely as a result of this failure, the locomotive’s service life following these modifications can be described as being brief at best.
Upon completion, she departed the factory on 15 April 1830, being shipped by sea from Newcastle to Whitstable. On 30 May 1830, ‘’Invicta’’ hauled the inaugural train of the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway into Whitstable Harbour station. For this maiden journey, the locomotive was driven by Edward Fletcher, who later became the locomotive superintendent of the North Eastern Railway. ‘’Invicta’’ was the sole locomotive to be used on the line at the time of its opening.
Initial operations using ‘’Invicta’’ saw it routed along the northern three kilometres of the Canterbury & Whitstable line; however, it soon became apparent that the locomotive lacked the power at any speed to haul trains up the steep incline along Church Street when departing Whitstable. An alternative working practice was adopted to address this power shortage, starting in 1832; instead, trains were pulled up the incline using a stationary engine, which was reportedly capable of generating up to 11.2kW, that was positioned at the top of the slope, while ‘’Invicta’’ was restricted to worked the 1.6km of track at South Street, which was relatively level.
During 1836, it was decided to perform a number of design modifications to ‘’Invicta’’. These involved the addition of another ring section to the boiler in place of the firebox, and the replacement of the original multi-tube boiler with a single flue boiler; this last change proved to be a retrograde step, even by that time, it had been generally accepted that multi-tube boilers were in fact more efficient than their single-tube counterparts. Reportedly, these changes had a negative impact on the locomotive’s performance, often failing to produce a sufficient head of steam as to allow ‘’Invicta’’ to perform the services desired of it. Largely as a result of this failure, the locomotive’s service life following these modifications can be described as being brief at best.
Invicta (locomotive)