The background image on this page comes from a black and white printed image (scanned, and subsequently colour corrected for brightness and contrast), forming part of the N. Potter Collection and published by the then Mile End Railway Museum in the book "Locomotives of Australian National" by Sampson and Fluck.
It is published here with the permission of Robert Sampson and the Port Dock Station Railway Museum. It shows the locomotive standing under the sand tower in the original Mile End diesel locomotive depot, and was photographed in 1952.
900 has been preserved, and is now the property of the Port Dock Station Railway Museum.
The background image is 800 pixels wide. If your browser window is wider than that (if you see the image repeating to the right), the page will look better if you resize it to avoid the 2nd image.
In the 1950s, the webmaster of this site worked for one of the divisions of the English Electric Company Limited. He remembers seeing a publicity brochure issued by that company, describing the virtues of a 1760HP diesel-electric locomotive in use on South Australian Railways.
Several years later, relocated to Australia, a second-hand copy of that brochure found its way into his hands. This page is in part put together with paraphrased and amplified text and scanned images from that brochure. Click on the small image to open a larger one in another browser window.
On 28th November 1951, 900 paired with its colleague 901 started a many-year association with the Adelaide - Melbourne overnight express known as the Overland. The class had cut its teeth on the relative flat lines north of Adelaide, and with two locomotives needed to run a heavy train through to Tailem Bend on the 1 in 40 grades at 10 chain radius curves of the South line, obviously a wait until the next member of the class was available was needed.
In the picture to the left we see 901 and 902 drifting downgrade towards Adelaide out of the Sleeps Hill Tunnel on an undefined date prior to 1952 (the date of the original article reproduced in the brochure).
The 900 class was in many ways a visual hybrid; the designers of the locomotive made the conscious decision to use the aesthetically beautiful lines of portions of two overseas locomotives
Historically, the South Australian Chief Mechanical Engineer and his staff, as had their counterparts in the Victorian Railways, had already stated a preference for having Australian versions of the General Motors EMD F7 which would be manufactured in Australia by the Australian EMD representative, Clyde Engineering.
This was at a time only a few years after World War II ended, and the antagonistic attitude of the Australian Federal (central) government towards buying anything that wasn't British was very apparent.
Both Victoria and South Australia had their application for dollars rejected out of hand.
In typical "Yes, Minister" style, a year or two later, the Commonwealth Railways reluctantly came to the same conclusion about diesel power and made the same choice about supplier.
Surprise! The Commonwealth Railways were allowed to buy with US dollars!
In the mean while, though, South Australia had decided that they could do the job themselves, having built a number of large steam locomotives theselves at Islington, and having dabbled in very small diesel power.
And of course the South Australian Railways also had considerable maintenance expertise in the railcars they ran on a number of country routes, introduced as a result of the Webb era, so they tackled the big job with enthusiasm.
One imagines an amount of research would have gone into the design of the outside of an obviously different main line flagship from the Commonwealth's and the Victorians. In fact if you look at the Islington workshops' photo above, you can see a remarkable similarity with the American Locomotive Company's model PA below it to your left - essentially different from the EMD Bulldog nose below that.
Modellers' note... in HO scale you can make a very credible 900 out of a PA, merely by removing a few millimetres from the front nose under the cab windows - equivalent to about one foot in real life!
The illustration (courtesy the SAR) shows where 900's designers got it from, when one compares it with the E series above. They were cast by Bradford Kendall, and were the largest bogie that they had ever cast at that time. Actually it surprises me that the SAR didn't cast them in their own foundry.
So if you are into modelling, it is easy to understand that if the Athearn PA body is then mounted on a Rivarossi E8 chassis and bogies, almost all the detail is correct. Little needs to be adjusted where the roof hatches are located, nor the four in-line radiator fans at the rear of the roof.
On the right we see the body and its structural members before being clad in aluminium faced plywood, sealed against moisture.
The SAR opted for English Electric to manufacture their 800-class shunters (10 built, starting in service from May 1956), and then went on to build their own 500 class over a 5-year period starting 1964, all from English Electric components.
It is notable that Queensland and Western Australia both bought EECo locomotives for narrow-gauge operation, with a number of repeat orders.
The design looks very clean. When one reads the descriptive material, it is discovered that there were ten throttle notches on EECo diesel locomotive controllers - perhaps because the same mechanical parts were interchangeable with their electric locomotives.
Ten throttle notches meant that the 900s could only ever run "in multiple" with themselves.
It shows a 900 class member leading the "East-West" connection between the Trans-Australian and the Overland past the site of the old Port Pirie Junction in the early 1970s.
Perhaps we should also examine the special passenger rolling-stock built in association with the 900s at a later date. It looks remarkably similar to the Southern Pacific Daylight.
Particularly when you saw it prior to the removal of skirts, replacement of bogies, and substituting standard flexible connections between vehicles rather than the full width diaphragms/concertinas originally supplied.
In the mean time, we are just getting the information up as quickly as possible.
This page has not yet been completed
And some of the image links may not work yet, either :)
Please watch this space!