Withdrawal
All members of the B class, including the three converted into WE tanks, survived until the last decade of steam in New Zealand in the 1960s, with the country's last regular steam-hauled service running on 26 October 1971. B 302 barely made it into the 1960s, becoming the first of the class to be withdrawn on 2 December 1960. B 306 followed the next year, and by the start of 1967, only two Bs were in operation. They were retired in December of that year. The last WE was taken out of service in March 1969.
No members of either B or WE classes survived to be preserved, despite the fact they survived into the era of preservation societies. The last known example, low-boilered B 302, had been dumped near Brunner in December 1960 after colliding with AB 818. Although heavily damaged, the locomotive was still largely intact until 1970, when the A 428 Preservation Society travelled to Brunner and cut the locomotive up for scrap as part of a fundraising drive to save A 428 for preservation.
Read more about this topic: NZR B Class (1899)
Famous quotes containing the word withdrawal:
“A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.... Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“A separation situation is different for adults than it is for children. When we were very young children, a physical separation was interpreted as a violation of our inalienable rights....As we grew older, the withdrawal of love, whether that meant being misunderstood, mislabeled or slighted, became the separation situation we responded to.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)