Commonwealth Railways NSU class


The NSU class were a class of diesel locomotives built by Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company for Commonwealth Railways for use on the Central and North Australia Railways in 1954-1955.

History

By the end of World War II, the Commonwealth Railways were operating a ragged and worn out collection of rollingstock on their Central and North and Trans-Australian lines. Some of the narrow gauge locomotives were fifty or more years old, and the rolling stock not much the younger. Federal Minister for Fuel, Shipping & Transport George McLeay, made recommendations to Cabinet in 1950, to upgrade the Commonwealth Railway's fleet of both narrow and standard gauge locomotives and rollingstock.
In 1950 a tender was issued for 14 diesel locomotives for the narrow gauge lines. Thirteen companies submitted over thirty designs. However, as the specifications were rigid, most did not get past the first stage of the selection procedure.
The CR's Mechanical Branch also seemed to take preference for slower revving engines. The Sulzer plant finally selected ran at 750 rpm at idle, whereas one design submitted by AE Goodwin ran at 1500 rpm. Finlay noted the "CR Mechanical Branch appeared not to have been overly excited about high revving engines, as it feared they would lead to high repair bills. 1000 rpm was considered fast enough". Finlay also notes that the seemed preference for slower speed engines, as well as the requirement of an electrical transmission resulted in the failure of many of the submitted tenders.
In 1951, the CR departed from their apparent tradition of using "well proven" designs, and awarded to contract to build the class of locomotives, later to be known as the NSU, to the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd. The Sulzer/BRCW design had won over the English Electric Company's submission. Whilst EE were obviously a better known company, having built many other pioneering Diesel Electrics, Sulzer plants had been used widely in the UK and Europe and other exported units, and would go on to power some 690 British Railways machines, using both the 6LDA plant, and later and larger in-line and V- units.
Part of the Contract with BRCW stipulated that, in view of its 42 years of experience in loco design, Sulzer were to accept full responsibility for the design and performance of the completed loco. The CR had knowledge of Sulzer since the appointment of Henry Deane as its Engineer in Chief of Construction of the Trans-Australian line. Deane had proposed in the early days of the TAR that dieselisation was the way to go, and had considered early Sulzer designs then.., However, the technology was not developed enough to be reliable. Deane was a generation ahead of his time.

The Sulzer engine

The engines used in the NSU class were amongst the last engines built by Sulzer at its Winterthur plant, for use outside of Europe. Later engines were built under contract by Vickers-Armstrongs, Barrow-in-Furness, England.
The LDA series engine had its origins in the 1920s and was specifically designed for use in railway applications. Some sources suggest, similar to the WAGR X Class, a heritage in sub maritime application. There is no link. Perhaps similar to Crossley, Sulzer has had, and continues to have, a significant involvement in maritime work.

In service

The first to arrive was NSU52 on 10 May 1954 at Port Adelaide, it was used for crew training. It was followed by NSU51 on 20 May 1954. Still temporarily mounted on standard gauge bogies, on 12 June 1954 NSU51 was unveiled at Port Augusta with a pair of plates bearing the name of the Federal Minister for Fuel, Shipping & Transport George McLeay. The locomotive then worked a trip to Bookaloo and return for dignitaries and guests.
On 26 June 1954 NSUs 51 and 52 worked the first northbound diesel hauled Ghan into Alice Springs conveniently timed to coincide with a visit of Prime Minister, Robert Menzies. The last of the class was commissioned in August 1955.
Minor faults with voltage regulators and air and oil filtration systems were quickly rectified, and the class went on to earn a reputation as an efficient and robust unit. It was initially planned to the new locomotives would be able to complete a 1,370 kilometre round trip from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs on one tank of fuel. This proved to be impractical and a 91,000 litre fuel tank was installed at Alice Springs.
Though NSU54 did work on the standard gauge for some months between Port Augusta and Port Pirie during 1954, following that period the fleet worked out of Port Augusta on the narrow gauge. Following the conversion of the Central Australia Railway from Port Augusta to Marree to standard gauge in 1957, two were transferred to the North Australia Railway operating out of Darwin. Over the next 17 years locomotives would be periodically swapped between the two lines.
Similar to the standard gauge experience, dieselisation of the CAR led to a reduction of 60% of operating costs over steam.
In July 1975 all were included in the transfer of Commonwealth Railways to Australian National. The NSU class remained intact until the replacement of the narrow gauge Central Australia Railway in 1980 with two transferred to Gladstone for use on the Wilmington line and one to Peterborough for use on the Quorn line. A few saw service with contractors removing the closed Central Australian Railway. The last was withdrawn in 1987.

Preservation

All members of the class have survived., however, only one was operational, NSU52. Locomotives 55 and 58 are operable but have not been used in recent times.

Livery

The class spent their entire lives in Commonwealth Railways maroon and silver.

Status