The Victorian Railways A class was a 2-6-2 tank locomotive built for their 2' 6" (762 mm) gauge branch lines.
Baldwin Locomotive Works in the United States supplied the first two 2-6-2 tank locomotives, as well as parts for a further two locos. One each of the supplied locos and the parts kits was a simple loco, and the other a compound. The new class was classed "A"—often referred to early on as "Narrow-gauge A class"—however confusion with the broad gauge A, AA and A2 classes lead to the prefix "" being applied to written records, making it the A class. The Victorian Railways Newport workshops assembled the parts to give an additional two locos, and subsequently built a further 13 of the simple cylinder version. The last one, number 17, was built in 1915.
By the mid-1920s these small locomotives were not able to handle the increasing traffic, and two G class Garratt locomotives were purchased to supplement the fleet.
The locomotives weigh 36 tons (36.58 t) and produce a tractive effort of 12,170 lbf (54.1 kN), allowing them to haul loads of 90 tons (91.44 t) up grades of 1 in 30. Numbers 6, 7, 8, 12, and 14 have been restored and operate on the Puffing Billy Railway, and No. 3 is also on the Puffing Billy Railway, awaiting eventual restoration. The remaining locomotives have all been scrapped.
Famous quotes containing the words victorian, railways and/or class:
“I belong to the fag-end of Victorian liberalism, and can look back to an age whose challenges were moderate in their tone, and the cloud on whose horizon was no bigger than a man’s hand.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)
“There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)