Victorian Railways Y class (diesel)
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The Y class are a class of diesel locomotives built by
Clyde Engineering Clyde Engineering was an Australian manufacturer of locomotives, rolling stock, and other industrial products. It was founded in September 1898 by a syndicate of Sydney businessmen buying the Granville factory of timber merchants Huds ...
, Granville for 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 ...
between 1963 and 1968.


History

In 1963, the first of 25 general purpose diesel-electric locomotives was delivered by Clyde Engineering. As a cost saving measure, they were built with bogies and motors retrieved from scrapped
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; the re-use of these components reduced the unit cost of the Y class locomotive from around £52,000 ( $104,000) to £40,000 ($80,000). Two further orders saw the class total 75 by 1968. Although built to dieselise Victoria's shunting operations and replace steam locomotives on branch line services, they were also used on mainline goods and passenger services, including between
Spencer Street Spencer Street is a major street and thoroughfare in the Melbourne central business district, central business district of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria. The street was gazetted in 1837 as the westernmost boundary of the Hoddle Grid. ...
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 ...
. After closure of branch lines across the state and the end of short pick-up goods trains, use of the class dropped. In the 1980s, it is thought that four Y Class locomotives were on standard gauge, typically Nos 101–104. Withdrawals commenced from 1985 and large-scale scrappings commenced during 1991 and 1992. After the mass-withdrawals of the Y fleet up to 1992, engines 101, 102, 104, 150 and 151 were on standard gauge, as 103 had been withdrawn in the late 1980s. Y101 followed in the early '90s after suffering a collision, but it was not directly replaced. From 1995, under the newly formed V/Line Freight division, engines Y115, Y151, Y152 and Y169 were running trains on standard gauge, and locomotives Y124 and Y142 were confined to shunting at South Dynon. Within a few years Y150 had replaced Y115 on standard gauge, with the latter engine shifting to Ballarat as a yard pilot. Around the same time, Y169 replaced Y102, and Y152 replaced Y104. These two engines were stored at Newport workshops, then transferred to South Dynon's "rotten row" where they sat for about a decade. Only two engines—Y152 and Y165—were repainted into the V/Line Freight scheme, which was essentially the same as previous with a new decal and a lighter grey. The 1999 sale of V/Line Freight to Freight Victoria included engines 110, 113, 115, 118–119, 121–122, 138, 150–152, 157, 165, 169, 171 and 174. Some of these were upgraded by 2002 using traction motors and gear sets cascaded from the Freight Australia A and X Class locomotive upgrades, permitting operation at 80 km/h. This required replacing the original plain whitemetal axle boxes; in the short term they were modified but eventually they were all replaced with custom units, obviating the need for fortnightly lubrication of the bearings. Air conditioning was also fitted. Today, four are in service with
V/Line V/Line is a statutory authority that operates regional passenger train and coach services in Victoria, Australia. It provides passenger train services on five commuter lines and eight long-distance routes from its major hub at Southern Cross ...
as carriage yard shunters and fitted with low speed controls, with others owned by freight operator
Pacific National Pacific National is one of Australia's largest rail freight businesses. History In February 2002, National Rail Corporation, National Rail's freight operations and rollingstock (owned by the Government of Australia, Federal, Government of New ...
.Y Class
Vicsig
Seventeen units are officially preserved, though only a handful of those are operational.


Status table


References

{{VRLocos, state=collapsed Bo-Bo locomotives Clyde Engineering locomotives Pacific National diesel locomotives Railway locomotives introduced in 1963 Y class Broad gauge locomotives in Australia Diesel-electric locomotives of Australia Standard gauge locomotives of Australia