by John Wells
Many of us will remember the blue-and yellow electric locomotives on the Gippsland line. Though it seems that only four have been preserved they were the workhorses of the line and especially the draught-horses of the briquette traffic.
They were also an incredibly successful design and the only ‘Gippsland’ locomotives ever.
They were the only locomotives ever designed for Gippsland and they served us well. They were the only main-line electric locomotives Victoria ever had, and phasing them out, and removing the overhead wires and their stanchions may yet prove to have been a huge mistake.
They could haul bigger loads and maintain higher speeds than the S-class that ran the Sydney trains or the round-nosed B-class diesels. They also had a better braking capability. 
They were the L-class.

I didn’t know that as early as 1923 the Victorian Railways Commissioners had ruled that any locomotives built for Victoria had to be capable or being switched to standard gauge, and so it was with the L-class – but as no other country lines were electrified they were only used in Gippsland, as far as Traralgon, and sometimes on suburban lines. That suburban network was, and may still be, one of the largest electrified suburban networks in the world.

Soon after the Second World War the Victorian Railways embarked upon Operation Phoenix, to underpin industrial growth with a much better rail service. During the 1930s the Great Depression had led to things getting run-down, including track and rolling stock. During the war resources for maintenance and development were limited but the demand for rail transport was much greater. The budget for Operation Phoenix was a staggering 80 million pounds, and it included upgrading the Gippsland line, some duplication and electrification as far as Traralgon. It was a big, bold project, and it worked. 
Gippsland’s L-class was a part of the answer. One of the design briefs was that the new locomotives had to be able to haul heavy goods trains. Given that they were only to tun on the Gippsland line it was obvious that the L-class were intended for heavy coal traffic.
Because they could move big loads quickly, they meant minimum disruption to suburban services when they entered the metropolitan network.
They did have the problem that thy were very quiet and a several track workers were killed because they did not hear them coming. There were very few other accidents with them, though. L-1163 derailed just east of Drouin in 1985 and rolled down the embankment but the carriages all stayed on the line. Another was badly damaged near Darnum when a fallen tree brought down the overhead wires and the broken wires lashed the locomotive and the first carriage, shattering windows, No-one was hurt.
L-1164 broke down near Hearne’s Oak in 1984 and was struck by the relief locomotive, though neither was badly damaged.

We had 24 of them, operating from 1953 until 1987. The first L-class train ran to Lilydale, of all places, because the electrification of the Gippsland line was not completed until late 1956. I was nine years old and I still remember that first run of an L-class up the Gippsland line. I saw it on the Longwarry ‘bank’ alongside our farm.
They were numbered from L-1150 to L-1174. L-1150 was a sort of flagship, the only one of them to have a name. She was the “R.G. Wishart”, named after a VR Commissioner. This locomotive arrived in Victoria in January 1953 and its first run was to Lilydale, hauling an excursion train bound for Warburton. That was on 21 April 1953. The 24th and final L-class loco ‘entered service’ on August 3,1954.

Apart from some test runs the first twelve to arrive in Australia were stored at the Newport workshops because the electrification to Traralgon was not completed until 1956. It seems a little inefficient to buy locomotives for a specific line that was not to be fully ready for them for another two years, but that was the old VR.
To be fair, this was an inevitable part of Operation Phoenix, a desperate attempt to modernise a system that was in poor shape before the Second World War and was in even worse shape after it.
The briquettes from the La Trobe Valley were rapidly becoming a vital fuel for industry and they were widely used for domestic heating. We badly needed locomotives that could move them quickly and the L class could haul up to 1100 tons at a time, and haul them at up to 70 miles an hour. Fortunately they were also fitted with the best locomotive brake systems available in the world at the time.

That 70 miles an hour was the speed limit on the line because, like most Victorian lines ours was lightly laid and ballasted. The L-class hauled The Gippslander up to the 70mph limit, and the un-named but equally important “Sale express” which ran in the opposite directions each day. The L-class could not haul the Sale express or the Gippslander beyond Traralgon because that was the end of the electrification. T-class locos usually handled the Sale-Traralgon section.
One ruling I did not know about concerned the pantographs, the structures on top of the locos which ran along against the wires and brought the electricity on-board. On the L-class there was one pantograph on each end but they normally ran with just one raised. In winter, though, they were both raised, so that the first one would sweep off excess water and even ice and thus allow the second pantograph to make good contact. This was a simple thing, but not something one thinks of.

Nor did I know that the L-class were originally designed with rounded bulbous nose we see in the B-class. To make the locomotive lighter it was shortened and squared off, to a degree. There was no direct doorway into the drivers’ cabin. Lining of that cabin was in Masonite rather than steel very little bit helped make these probably the most efficient locomotives of their type anywhere in the world.
Of course, they were doomed to withdrawal, which was completed in June 1987. The locomotives were still in great shape but the facts that no other country lines were electrified, and that it was necessary to switch engines at Traralgon for through traffic added to the operating costs.

The L-class made the briquette industry economically viable. They hauled thousands upon thousands of us away from home and hauled thousands and thousands of us back home again.
You don’t have to be a train buff to appreciate them, or to remember them fondly.