Victorian Railways E class (electric)
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The Victorian Railways E class was a class of
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 ...
that 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 ...
from 1923 until 1984. Introduced shortly after the electrification of the suburban rail system in
Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
, Australia, and based on the same electrical and traction equipment as Melbourne's early suburban
electric multiple unit An electric multiple unit or EMU is a multiple-unit train consisting of self-propelled carriages using electricity as the motive power. An EMU requires no separate locomotive, as electric traction motors are incorporated within one or a numbe ...
fleet, they provided power for suburban goods services and shunting for six decades.


History

With the rapid expansion of Melbourne's suburban electrification scheme, becoming by 1924 the largest in the world at 346 miles (557 km), the Victorian Railways decided to utilise the advantages of electric traction for suburban goods services, which until then had been hauled by
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 such as the Y class
0-6-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing wheels. This was the most common wheel arrangemen ...
, E class 2-4-2T and later Dde class
4-6-2 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and two trailing wheels on one axle. The locomotiv ...
T. In 1923 it introduced two electric locomotives of 620 hp (460 kW), built at VR's Newport and
Jolimont Workshops Jolimont Workshops was a railway workshop operated by the Victorian Railways beside Jolimont Yard, near the Melbourne CBD, Australia. Opened in 1917 and dedicated to the maintenance and repair of electric multiple units and locomotives, it was ...
with the same
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
traction motors and related electrical equipment that had been installed in Melbourne's Tait and
Swing Door A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a ''doorway'' or ''portal''. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security b ...
electric suburban train sets, with the notable exception of the deadman's handle because the driver would always have a second person with them,Newsrail April 1984 p.100 and because unnecessary activation of the emergency brake could damage goods loadings and delay following trains.


Production

The first two locomotives were built with a steeplecab-style appearance. Despite their appearance and unlike other steeplecab locomotives, they also included a large amount of the electrical equipment including the dynamotor in the driver's cab. The exposure of the driver to this electrical equipment led to them being nicknamed "
electric chair An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, ...
s" among drivers. The two were designed as "E" Class engines, but issued to service only with numbers 1100 and 1101. Following a 1926 review into suburban goods traffic a further fleet of engines were ordered to a modified design. These had a box-cab design on a longer frame with end platforms for crew access to the cabs, and two pantographs. These engines quickly gained the nickname "butterboxes", or occasionally "black engines" to distinguish them from all the "red rattlers". 1102 and 1103 entered service in 1928, followed by the rest of the class up to 1111 in 1929. It is thought that the original order was for only seven new engines, but some design documents refer to 1113 implying a total order of up to 12 additional units. Around the time of the first L Class locomotives, the butterbox engines started to have "E" letter plates affixed adjacent to the cabside and end handrail number plates as they were recovered from scrapped E Class steam engines. The two steeple-cab engines never had these "E" plates fitted.


Regular service

Upon introduction, the two steeple-cab locomotives proved the superiority of electric traction. They were able to operate together with
multiple-unit train control Multiple-unit train control, sometimes abbreviated to multiple-unit or MU, is a method of simultaneously controlling all the traction equipment in a train from a single location—whether it is a multiple unit comprising a number of self-powered ...
, allowing a single crew to control both as an articulated locomotive with greater
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 ...
than the
Victorian Railways C class The C class was a mainline goods locomotive of the 2-8-0 'Consolidation' type that ran on the Victorian Railways between 1918 and 1962. Although its original design had some key shortcomings, a number of improvements were made over the class' long ...
heavy goods locomotive, the most powerful steam locomotive on the VR at the time. Based on their success, suburban goods sidings were rapidly electrified and most suburban goods traffic utilised electric traction. With the electrification of the Gippsland line as far as
Traralgon Traralgon ( ) is a town located in the east of the Latrobe Valley in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia and the most populous city of the City of Latrobe. The urban population of Traralgon at the was 26,907. It is the largest and fastes ...
in the 1950s, the range of the E class locomotives was similarly extended and they could be found shunting or hauling services along the line. Locomotives 1100 to 1111 were painted in a plain black livery, matching that of the VR steam locomotive fleet. During the 1960s the ten box-cabs were painted in a variation of the blue and gold livery applied to the VR diesel fleet starting with E1111 on 13 November 1965. The locomotives were initially based at the
Jolimont Workshops Jolimont Workshops was a railway workshop operated by the Victorian Railways beside Jolimont Yard, near the Melbourne CBD, Australia. Opened in 1917 and dedicated to the maintenance and repair of electric multiple units and locomotives, it was ...
along with the suburban electric multiple unit fleet, as steam locomotives were housed at the
North Melbourne Locomotive Depot North Melbourne Locomotive Depot was the main location for maintenance of the Victorian Railways steam locomotive fleet based in Melbourne. Located in the middle of the Melbourne Yard precinct in the suburb West Melbourne, Victoria, West Melbourn ...
. However with the opening of the new
South Dynon Locomotive Depot South Dynon Locomotive Depot is an Australian locomotive depot in Melbourne, purpose built for the servicing of diesel and electric locomotives by the Victorian Railways opening in July 1961. It was built adjacent to the Dynon marshalling yards ...
in 1964, the entire E class fleet was relocated there in June 1968. When the boxcab engines were fitted with automatic couplers the frames were raised by about two inches, and the buffers lowered by the same amount, to gain clearance over the traction motors for the drawgear and associated equipment. The locomotives were fitted with dual couplers, where the head of the automatic coupler could be rotated out of the way to expose an older-style hook-and-chain coupler set.


Demise

The first two steeple-cab locomotives were "slightly damaged" due to a runaway incident in Fairfield in 1954 and withdrawn. The damage would have been repairable, but the engines could not be fitted with automatic couplers (possibly due to the shorter frame) and so they were scrapped in July 1955, By this time, the electric locomotive fleet had been substantially expanded with L class locomotives of a far more modern design. The box-cab E class locomotives continued in service. However, during the 1970s, Victorian Railways conducted detailed studies of goods traffic and found that handling costs made the transport of high rated, small freight items unprofitable. As a result of these studies, rail freight operations were rationalised around block trains carrying bulk freight such as gravel, rice or grain, and suburban goods sidings were closed in favour of road freight services. Furthermore, the use of block trains greatly reduced the need for shunting locomotives. These operational changes rendered the ageing E class suburban electric locomotives surplus, and by 1981 scrappings had commenced. The last was withdrawn from service in 1984.


Preservation

Four E class locomotives have survived into preservation. As of May 2007, their disposition was as follows: *E 1102 is in static preservation at the
Newport Railway Museum The Newport Railway Museum is located on Champion Road, Newport, Victoria, near the North Williamstown station. History The museum opened on 10 November 1962, after the Australian Railway Historical Society (ARHS) Victorian Division was allocat ...
, wearing its original black livery *E 1106 and 1108 were stored out of service by
Steamrail Victoria Steamrail Victoria is a not-for-profit volunteer group established in 1965 to restore and operate historic locomotives and rolling stock used on the Rail transport in Victoria, railways in Victoria, Australia. The main depot of the group is at ...
*E 1109 is also in the custody of Steamrail Victoria, and is a long term restoration project.


References


External links


victorianrailways.net E class locomotive page
Details and further photographs of E class locomotives {{VRLocos Bo-Bo locomotives E class (electric) 1500 V DC locomotives Electric locomotives of Australia Railway locomotives introduced in 1923 Broad gauge locomotives in Australia