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:
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)