Works
Operation Phoenix was conceived to address these issues, and took 18 months of planning before it was publicly released. As a whole the program would cost £83 million pounds, with £40 million pounds to be spent on rolling stock, including:
- 350 steam and diesel locomotives
- 30 railcars
- 290 steel passenger cars
- 280 suburban passenger carriages
- 9000 goods wagons
- 300 goods vans
Capital works took up the other 43 million, and were planned to cover:
- An underground railway between a new Richmond station and North Melbourne via the north of the Melbourne CBD (not realised until the City Loop of the 1980s)
- track modernisation, rebuilding, regrading and duplication of existing lines
- replacement of timber bridges to permit heavier trains
- modernisation of locomotives depots and workshops
- reconstruction and expending Melbourne Yard and associated goods sheds
Initial projects included:
- 100 steam locomotives
- 17 diesel electric locomotives
- 10 diesel electric shunting locomotives
- 30 self-propelled railcars
- 1000 goods wagons
- Electrification, regrading and duplication of the main Gippsland line from Dandenong to Traralgon, to cope with demand for Morwell brown coal and to reduce the dependence on New South Wales coal.
- importation of electric locos
- new substations on the suburban railway lines
To ensure the earliest possible delivery, the construction of the steam locomotives, railcars, and half of the wagons was contracted to British firms, with 18 of the railcars had already been completed by 1950. The major components for the mainline diesel electric locomotives were to be imported from the United States, dependent on the allocation of foreign exchange funds from the federal government.
The remainder of the new rolling stock was constructed by the VR's own workshops, including 20 of the "N class" steam engines, 14 new air-conditioned passenger cars, and 2 new suburban trains.
Read more about this topic: Operation Phoenix (railway)
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience enable us to follow Jesus’ example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of love, and clothe religion in human forms. Whatever materializes worship hinders man’s spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.”
—Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)