In late 1967, the Western Australian Government Railway (WAGR) took delivery of the first of twenty three L class 3000HP (2237KW) diesel electric locomotives, built at Clyde’s Granville NSW plant and intended for use on the then soon to be operational standard gauge line between Kalgoorlie and Perth.
They featured an EMD V16 645E3 diesel engine driving an AR10 man alternator which powered the six D77 traction motors. The body design was the ‘hood’ type with a short chopped nose on the No1 end and they weighed in at 137 tonnes. In 1973 Western Mining Corporation (WMC) financed a further two identical units for its Windarra Mine operation and these were operated as part of the WAGR fleet. Just prior to that in 1972, Comalco had purchased two virtually identical units, but built in Brisbane, having no dynamic brakes and ballasted to 148 tonnes, for operation on their Weipa bauxite mining operations (covered in the presentation Rio Tinto Weipa Ora Trains.
With the delivery of WAGR’s Q Class, many of the L Class went into storage. In 1998 seven of them were purchased by ATN Access for main line grain haulage and five of these were upgraded to include Quantum traction control equipment, but in 2003 ATN Access was taken over by Pacific National (PN). The remaining WAGR L Class ultimately were sold to Australian Railway Group (ARG) in 2000, who started upgrading these with ZTR traction control and identifying them as 31 Class. ARG were themselves purchased by QR National (QRN) in 2009. QRN also purchased three of the ex-ATN ACCESS and one ex-Comalco unit via Rail Technical Services (RTS). These too have been given upgraded traction control equipment and hence QRN has LQ and LZ class, the trailing letter indicating the type of traction control fitted.
In 1977, some ten years after the L Class had entered service with WAGR, Victorian Railways (VR) introduced the first of 10 almost identical locomotives, the main differences being a ‘hood’ design with a full width nose with single drivers station (intended for running only with No1 end leading), a reduced weight of 132 tonnes and being built in Rosewater SA. Some received the VLine logo but all passed eventually to National Rail (NR) in 1992 and subsequently to Pacific National (PN) in 2002. After PN received more modern and powerful locomotives, 9 were sold to Silverton and, after the Silvertons take over by Allco Finance, also worked with Coote Industrial/South Spur. Most were upgraded with the Quantum traction control equipment. The 10th unit and class leader C501 passed to the Seymour Heritage Rail Centre.
In this presentation we will examine both the inside and outside features of the C and L class locomotives and view them in rail operations.
Approximate run time: 102 minutes.