The New Zealand E class

battery-electric locomotive An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage such as a battery or a supercapacitor. Locomotives with on-board fuelled prime movers, such as diesel engines or gas tur ...

represented the third unique type of locomotive class to be given the E classification in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. The first was the E class of nine

Double Fairlie A Fairlie is a type of articulated steam locomotive that has the driving wheels on bogies. The locomotive may be double-ended (a double Fairlie) or single ended (a single Fairlie). Fairlies are most famously associated with the Ffestiniog ...

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s of 1872-75; the second E class consisted of a

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compound Compound may refer to: Architecture and built environments * Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall ** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struct ...

made in 1906; and as both were no longer operated by the New Zealand Railways in 1923, the classification was free to be used for a third time when the small battery-electric locomotive was delivered. This is the only time a classification has been used three times in New Zealand, though re-use happened a number of other times, arguably most notably when the A class of 1906 took the designation originally used by the A class of 1873.

Introduction

This particular E class was ordered for service on the newly electrified

Otira Tunnel The Otira Tunnel is a railway tunnel on the Midland Line in the South Island of New Zealand, between Otira and Arthur's Pass. It runs under the Southern Alps from Arthur's Pass to Otira – a length of over . The gradient is mainly 1 in 33, and ...

section of the Midland line and was constructed in 1922. In April 1923,

English Electric N.º UIC: 9094 110 1449-3 (Takargo Rail) The English Electric Company Limited (EE) was a British industrial manufacturer formed after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, armistice of World War I by amalgamating five businesses which, during th ...

delivered an order of six locomotives: five EO class mainline locomotives that collected electricity from overhead wires, and a sixth small battery-electric locomotive for maintenance duties. It was classified as E 1, had a wheel arrangement of Bo-Bo-2 (including a 4-wheeled battery tender) under the

UIC classification The UIC classification of locomotive axle arrangements, sometimes known as the German classification''The Railway Data File''. Leicester: Silverdale, 2000. p. 52. . or German system,Kalla-Bishop P.M. & Greggio, Luciano, ''Steam Locomotives'', Cre ...

system, and worked for the rest of the 1920s.

Withdrawal

The locomotive was written off around 1930 due to the costs involved in maintaining its batteries. Instructions were issued for any equipment that could not be re-used elsewhere from the locomotive to be dumped locally. E 1's cab can still be found alongside the track just south of Otira. The runner wagon for E 1 was stripped of its batteries and found use at Addington Workshops as a general-purpose wagon around the complex. E 1 consisted of a locomotive and a tender, each carrying 216 "Ironclad

Exide Exide was originally a brand name for batteries produced by The Electric Storage Battery Company and later became Exide Corporation doing business as Exide Technologies, an American multinational lead-acid batteries manufacturing company. It ...

" cells with a total capacity of 167,000 ampere-hours at 400 volts. Four DK 30 self ventilating traction motors each of were used for a total tractive effort of and a maximum speed of . It could haul at on the

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradi ...

of 1 in 33 (3 %) that prevailed between

Arthurs Pass Arthur's Pass, previously called Camping Flat then Bealey Flats, and for some time officially Arthurs Pass, is a township in the Southern Alps of the South Island of New Zealand, located in the Selwyn district. It is a popular base for explorin ...

and

Otira Otira is a small township fifteen kilometres north of Arthur's Pass in the central South Island of New Zealand. It is on the northern approach to the pass, a saddle between the Otira and Bealey Rivers high in the Southern Alps. A possible meani ...

References

Citations

Bibliography

* Pioneer Electrics: A survey of railway electrification in the South Island. A J Pickering / I D Spicer (ed.). Tramway Historical Society : Christchurch, New Zealand : 1970. * {{NZR Locomotives E class (battery electric) Bo-Bo locomotives English Electric locomotives 3 ft 6 in gauge locomotives of New Zealand Scrapped locomotives Battery electric locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1922