The mainline passenger locomotives, later classified as B class, ran on the
Victorian Railways
The Victorian Railways (VR), trading from 1974 as VicRail, was the state-owned operator of most rail transport in the Australian state of Victoria from 1859 to 1983. The first railways in Victoria were private companies, but when these companie ...
(VR) between 1862 and 1917. They used a wheel arrangement, which provided greater traction on the new, more heavily graded
Geelong–Ballarat railway and the
Melbourne-Bendigo-Echuca railway, as opposed to the
2-2-2
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-2-2 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, two powered driving wheels on one axle, and two trailing wheels on one axle. The wheel arrangement both ...
arrangement previously selected for the relatively level
Geelong line. The B class locomotives are regarded as the first mainline VR motive power, and were highly successful in passenger operations.
History
The Victorian Railways was formed after the government had taken over the struggling
Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway Company
The Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway Company was a railway company in Victoria, Australia. It was established on 8 February 1853 to build a railway from Melbourne to Echuca on the Victorian-NSW border and a branch railway to ...
in 1856 and the
Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company
The Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company was a railway company in Victoria, Australia.
Alexander Thomson, a member of the Victorian Legislative Council, introduced and mentored a bill to incorporate the Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company. ...
line in 1860. The new organisation began the construction of two main lines to serve the booming gold-mining towns of
Ballarat
Ballarat ( ) is a city in the Central Highlands (Victoria), Central Highlands of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 Census, Ballarat had a population of 116,201, making it the third largest city in Victoria. Estimated resid ...
,
Castlemaine and
Sandhurst (Bendigo), as well as tap the lucrative
Murray River
The Murray River (in South Australia: River Murray) (Ngarrindjeri: ''Millewa'', Yorta Yorta: ''Tongala'') is a river in Southeastern Australia. It is Australia's longest river at extent. Its tributaries include five of the next six longest r ...
trade at
Echuca
Echuca ( ) is a town on the banks of the Murray River and Campaspe River in Victoria, Australia. The border town of Moama is adjacent on the northern side of the Murray River in New South Wales. Echuca is the administrative centre and largest s ...
. Those ambitious new railway projects, engineered to a very high, and very expensive, standard, traversed some difficult terrain, which featured numerous gradients of up to 1 in 50. The 2-2-2 passenger locomotives the VR had used to operate the relatively flat Geelong line proved unsuitable for heavier grades,
[Cave et al., p. 37] and the VR fleet was also stretched in serving the needs of its rapidly expanding network.
New locomotives were ordered from
R and W Hawthorn
R and W Hawthorn Ltd was a locomotive manufacturer in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, from 1817 until 1885.
Locomotive building
Robert Hawthorn first began business at Forth Bank Works in 1817, building marine and stationary steam engines. In 1820, ...
in
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
in February 1861, with a layout very similar to that of a successful design previously built for the
Great Northern Railway in England, but with modifications such as the fitting of cabs and
steam dome
The steam dome is a vessel fitted to the top of the boiler of a steam engine. It contains the opening to the main steam pipe and its purpose is to allow this opening to be kept well above the water level in the boiler. This arrangement acts as a ...
s.
Production
The initial order of seven locomotives was followed by another order of seven of the same type from
Beyer, Peacock and Company
Beyer, Peacock and Company was an English railway locomotive manufacturer with a factory in Openshaw, Manchester. Founded by Charles Beyer, Richard Peacock and Henry Robertson, it traded from 1854 until 1966. The company exported locomotives, ...
in April 1862, and there were two further orders of six locomotives from each manufacturer in October and the following January.
None of the locomotives had arrived in time for the opening of the
Geelong to Ballarat line in April 1862, and passenger services on the line had to be worked by suburban
saddle tank locomotives (later designated as L class) until the arrival of the first of the new main line locomotives in July 1862.
[Cave, et al., p. 38]
The success of the mainline locomotives was such that, despite ongoing advances in locomotive technology, the design continued to be built. A further order of six locomotives was placed with Beyer Peacock in 1871, and a two were built by the
Phoenix Foundry
The Phoenix Foundry was a company that built steam locomotives and other industrial machinery in the city of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Over 30 years they built 352 locomotives for the Victorian Railways, of 38 different designs.
History ...
of Ballarat in 1880.
[Cave, et al., p. 39]
The locomotives were initially unclassed, and were numbered according to the initial scheme, in which odd numbers were used for goods locomotives and even numbers for passenger locomotives, before being denoted as "B class" under the VR's 1889 reclassification. By that time, a new
4-4-0
4-4-0 is a locomotive type with a classification that uses the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement and represents the arrangement: four leading wheels on two axles (usually in a leading bogie), four po ...
express passenger locomotive had been introduced, which took the "A class" designation.
Design features
The B-class locomotives were easily recognisable by their use of external frames and bearings, with coupling rods mounted outside the frames, earning them the nickname "overarmers".
They featured an unusual design of
firebox
Firebox may refer to:
*Firebox (steam engine), the area where the fuel is burned in a steam engine
*Firebox (architecture), the part of a fireplace where fuel is combusted
*Firebox Records
Firebox Records was a Finnish record label based in S ...
, which had two separate chambers, each with its own
firedoor
Boilers for generating steam or hot water have been designed in countless shapes, sizes and configurations. An extensive terminology has evolved to describe their common features. This glossary provides definitions for these terms.
Terms which re ...
, divided by a water space that effectively acted as a
thermic syphon
Thermic siphons (alt. thermic syphons) are Heat-exchanger, heat-exchanging elements in the Firebox (steam engine), firebox or Combustion chamber#Steam engine, combustion chamber of some steam boiler and steam locomotive designs. As they are dire ...
, and joined at the tubeplate. The two fireboxes were designed to be worked separately, with one fire being built while the other was burning. That configuration was designed to extract the maximum heat from the wood fuels the VR used in its early years. However, the last two locomotives, built in the 1880s, had a conventional single firebox.
[
]
Service Life
The B class's initial duties, hauling passenger services on the new mainlines, expanded as the mainline network grew. B 88 had the honour of leading the first VR train to Albury on 14 June 1883.[
B 50 was selected to haul the first ]Victorian Railways Royal Train
The Victorian Railways' (VR) Royal Trains operated to transport members of the Royal Family on their numerous tours of Australia on the Victorian rail network. The same carriages were also used for a number of vice-regal trains for the Governor ...
in 1867, taking Prince Alfred Duke of Edinburgh to Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine. The Royal Train was recorded running the between Melbourne and Geelong in as little as 52 minutes.
By 1894, the VR's Rolling Stock Branch Diagram Book noted the allocation of B-class locomotives around the state, with two at Stawell, six at Melbourne, five at Bendigo, three at Geelong, six at Ballarat, four at Benalla
Benalla
is a small city located on the Broken River gateway to the High Country north-eastern region of Victoria, Australia, about north east of the state capital Melbourne. At the the population was 10,822.
It is the administrative centr ...
, and three at Seymour.[Cave, et al., p. 49]
While the B-class locomotives were highly successful on the expensively engineered 1860s mainlines for which they were designed, they were less suited for the more cheaply built extensions to the VR system. Future VR express passenger locomotives were to use a four-wheel leading bogie
A bogie ( ) (in some senses called a truck in North American English) is a chassis or framework that carries a wheelset, attached to a vehicle—a modular subassembly of wheels and axles. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transp ...
to steer the locomotive, and from 1884, a class of 4-4-0
4-4-0 is a locomotive type with a classification that uses the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement and represents the arrangement: four leading wheels on two axles (usually in a leading bogie), four po ...
locomotives (later classed ' Old A') began to supplement, and eventually supersede the B class. Despite the delivery of the Old A, and the later and increasingly larger ' New A' and AA class
AA, Aa, Double A, or Double-A may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* ''America's Army'', a 2002 computer game published by the U.S. Army
* '' Ancient Anguish'', a computer game in existence since 1992
* Aa!, a J-Pop musical group
* Do ...
4-4-0s of 1889 and 1900 respectively, the entire B class (other than a couple of accident write-offs) lasted into the 20th century, with their roles ranging from double heading
In railroad terminology, double heading indicates the use of two locomotives at the front of a train, each operated individually by its own crew. The practice of triple-heading involves the use of three locomotives. The practice of multi-headi ...
on express passenger trains to shunting duties.
Design improvements
Given their long life and the considerable technological development of railways during that period, the B-class locomotives saw a number of improvements.
As delivered, the only means of braking them was by operating a handbrake on the tender wheels. B 50 and B 108 were used in comparative trials of the Woods hydraulic and Westinghouse air brake systems in January 1884, leading to the Westinghouse system being adopted as the standard.[
During the 1880s, the boiler pressure of the locomotives was increased from to ,][ and their cylinder bore was increased from , with those rebuilt after 1896 being fitted with cylinders. Those changes led to considerably increased ]tractive effort
As used in mechanical engineering, the term tractive force can either refer to the total traction a vehicle exerts on a surface, or the amount of the total traction that is parallel to the direction of motion.
In railway engineering, the term tr ...
.
The large spark-arresting chimneys originally fitted were replaced by a straight chimney, with a conical spark arrestor being located in the smokebox
A smokebox is one of the major basic parts of a steam locomotive exhaust system. Smoke and hot gases pass from the firebox through tubes where they pass heat to the surrounding water in the boiler. The smoke then enters the smokebox, and is e ...
.
The cab was also redesigned to provide greater amenity to the crew. The original sheet metal structure, prone to vibration at speed, was replaced by one of wood, and a double roof was employed for greater comfort in Australian weather conditions.
Accidents
B 82 and B 92 were wrecked beyond repair in a head-on collision on the Geelong line between Little River
Little River may refer to several places:
Australia Streams New South Wales
*Little River (Dubbo), source in the Dubbo region, a tributary of the Macquarie River
* Little River (Oberon), source in the Oberon Shire, a tributary of Coxs River (Haw ...
and Werribee
Werribee is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Wyndham local government area. Werribee recorded a population of 50,027 at the 2021 census.
Werribee i ...
on 2 April 1884.[ On 18 August of the same year, B 72's boiler exploded at Warrenheip, although that locomotive was repaired and returned to service.
B 110 was involved in a spectacular mishap on 13 April 1904 when it pushed a rake of coal wagons off the end of the coal stage at Seymour and was left suspended by its tender, resting on the wreckage of the wagons below.]
Withdrawal and scrapping
Other than accident write-offs, the entire class lasted until 1904, when ten were withdrawn, many of which were over forty years old by that stage. Over the next ten years, the remainder of the class was gradually retired as mechanical condition dictated, to the point where just two locomotives, B 56 and B 76, remained on the register.
Those last two members of the class served out their final days shunting carriages at Spencer Street Station and North Melbourne
North Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, north-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. North Melbourne recorded a population of 14,953 at the ...
yards, and were withdrawn for scrapping in May and June 1917.[
None were preserved.
]
References
*
External links
VPRS 12903/H 1177
B, O and L class locomotive at Spencer Street locomotive sheds, with B 50 decorated for hauling the Royal Train
VPRS 12903/P1 Box 299/08
Drawing of B class steam locomotive
{{VRLocos
2-4-0 locomotives
B class
Beyer, Peacock locomotives
Railway locomotives introduced in 1862
Broad gauge locomotives in Australia
Scrapped locomotives