History
By 1900, Victoria's express passenger locomotive fleet was almost exclusively made up of 4-4-0 designs of the Old A, New A, and the most recent AA class. These locomotives reflected contemporary British locomotive practice (as did the VR's fleet of 0-6-0 goods locomotives), in no small part due to VR having appointed in 1884 a Midland Railway manager Mr. R Speight as its first Chief Commissioner as well as a British engineer (Mr. E Jeffreys) and a British locomotive manufacturer (Kitson & Co. of Leeds) to provide standard designs for the VR.
At the turn of the century, in what marked a major shift in policy, the VR under recently appointed Commissioner Mr. J Mathieson set up a Locomotive Design Section for in-house development of future motive power. The Dd class locomotives were the first product of this exercise. A 4-6-0 design equipped with 5 ft 1 in driving wheels, saturated steam boiler and Belpaire firebox, the Dd reflected the considerable talent of VR's design team, which included ex-Beyer, Peacock and Company recruit Eugene Siepen, future VR Chief Mechanical Engineer Alfred Smith, and Rolling Stock Branch manager Thomas Woodroffe.
Read more about this topic: Victorian Railways Dd Class
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)