History
Australia was a relatively early adopter of electric traction and Electric Multiple Unit trains, with a General Electric advertisement in Railway Age magazine of 1924 claiming that Melbourne had the largest suburban electrification scheme in the world at 346 miles (557 km). However, electrification in Victoria had until the 1950s only extended as far as the Melbourne suburban network. Apart from the EMU fleet the only electric locomotives operated by the VR were a fleet of 12 small 620 hp (460 kW) E class electric locomotives, built at VR's Newport Workshops for suburban goods service, using the same General Electric traction motors and electrical equipment employed on Melbourne's EMU fleet.
During the early 1950s, Victorian Railways embarked on an £80 million program dubbed 'Operation Phoenix' to rebuild a network badly run down by years of Depression-era underinvestment and wartime overutilisation. This included a substantial upgrade (regrading, rerouting, and electrification) of the Gippsland line servicing Victoria's substantial brown coal fields in the Latrobe Valley to allow for greatly increased traffic in briquettes for industrial use. A suitably powerful electric locomotive was sought for both express passenger and heavy freight use on the upgraded, electrified line.
Read more about this topic: Victorian Railways L Class (electric)
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