Operation Phoenix (railway) - Works

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.