NEW LOCOMOTIVES

Evening Star, Issue 19409, 18 November 1926, Page 15

NEW LOCOMOTIVES

HEW ZALAHD'S PROGRAMME WELL FORWARD , / ___ ■' TEH MONSTERS COMPLETED HILLSIDE PROVIDING HILL TYPE. [Special to* the * Star.'] CHRISTCHURCH. November .17.. When “ Passchendaelo,” the. big memorial railway engine, was exhibited at the Dunedin Exhibition its immense size, realised by the intimate inspection, made a deep impression on most visitors, yet ten locomotives of the same size and of the same A.B. class have just been completed at the Addington Workshops. Each of these engines weighs eighty-four tons, and each carries 3,500 gallons of water. As part of the, same building programme ton W.A.B. tank, engines are now approaching completion at the Hillside works. With their completion the department will have caught up with the immediate demand for locomotives necessary in the ordinary course of expansion and for replacements, and so will not be embarrassed in the transition period while the workshops are being remodelled and new machinery is being installed. . In. the ordinary course there can be little constructional work in this period. The department is now considering the tenders for the new workshops at Addington and elsewhere. In the past few months the obsolete tools and plant at Addington have been replaced by new and up-to-date gear, but the bigger typo of machinery which will add so much to the efficiency and speed of the work at Addington has still to come to hand. Doubtless there will be delays owing to the strike, and possibly it will take about two years to assemble, this being the period it is expected the now works will take to construct. Each of the ten W.A.B. locomotives being built at Hillside will weigh seventy-two tons, but the type is more powerful than the heavier A.B. class. They are designed to operate mostly on the hilly country between Oamaru and Dunedin. Their limitation is that, although of a higher power, they are not designed for the long distances an A.B. engine can undertake without replenishing its . water supply. Their carrying capacity is only 1,700 gallons, and they have a heavy water pressure. The ten A.B. engines now turned out from Addington will be allocated over the South Island under a scheme of grouping, the same makes (so far as possible) in the same areas. There are North British A.B.s as well as those made at Addington, and they have points of difference, so that a separation has advantages. “ Passchendaele ’.’ was the first of its class built at Addington,, and when it was exhibited at Dunedin it had. already covered well over 300,000 miles. It now is on the south express run, and shortly it will be taken off pending the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York, for it is to draw the Royal train. In the interim it will bo fitted with a new boiler and “ decorated ” for its special job. Although the department has. now more or less standardised its policy to the construction of A.B. W.A.B. locomotives, there is a possibility of a heavier engine being introduced in the near future on-the North Island Main Trunk line.