In late 1992 Freight Rail negotiated a ‘ready power’ agreement with Clyde, EMD and its banking partner for the supply of 31 heavy haulage locomotives for use on Hunter Valley coal trains. These had 4000hp/2860kw available for traction, weighed 165.2 tonnes and were manufactured by EMD in Canada, the first entering service in early 1994.
Freight Corp purchased these outright in 2001 before it and National Rail were merged to become Pacific National, after which a further 4 identical units were manufactured in 2005 locally by Downer EDI Rail at their Cardiff facility. They are known as Model GT46CWM and all feature the EMD 16-7103GA two stroke turbocharged diesel engine driving an AR11 alternator feeding 6 EMD D87 type traction motors. Because of their weight they are restricted to Hunter Valley coal trains and in that sense their job has never changed over the last 20 years.
Purchase of the 90 Class (and 82 Class to be covered in a separate presentation) released a large number of 81 Class from coal to general freight work, enabling many of the remaining elderly 80, 422, 442, 48 and 49 classes to be retired. In this presentation we will have a look at the inside and outside of the 90 Class and view it in service in the Hunter Valley operations.
Approximate run time: 104 minutes.