Tasmania, Australia
Originally purchased from Tasrail as part of the Leisure Rail WA project, ZC class, 2143, is seen during its time in store on the Don River Railway after the projects failure. The date is August 23rd, 2003.
© Steve Zvillis
| All 45 members of the 1300 & 1320 Classes were imported from Queensland at the end of 1988, although only 33 were recommissioned and used on the Tasmanian network. During recommissioning some minor tweaks were made to the locomotives to obtain better continuous tractive effort and improve reliability issues that had become a problem back in Queensland. All locos that entered service also have buffers removed and couplers modified. Some of these were more successful than others and indeed some of the locomotives only actually had a short working career on 'the island'. In the early 1990's, the Australian branch of the Morrison Knudsen Corporation was investigating the possibility of obtaining some locomotives that could be refurbished for the ad-hoc hire market. Enquiries and inspections were made at Launceston in Tasmania, and the result was 10 ZC class locomotives were sold to MKC. Of these, 2 were stripped and scrapped in Tasmania, whilst the other 8 were shipped to Whyalla, South Australia, destined to become the MKA Class. Over the next few years, operational members of the class dwindled, with many dormant locos being scrapped. A further 3 ZC's were sold to CFCLA in 2001 for use on a project called 'Leisure Rail WA', which planned to operate luxury trains around Western Australia. The project failed to get off the ground and the 2 of the locos were sold to a Chemical company in Senegal, West Africa, being overhauled and modified to the 2025 Class in South Australia. The 'other' forgotten ZC was left to rot at the Don River Railway, Devonport, where it is now slowly being dismantled. By a strange coincidence, some of the ZC class locomotives that were sold to MKA, returned to the 'Island' in December 2004. Unfortunately these arrivals signalled the end of the line for the remaining ZC class locos as bogies and other spares were needed from these locos to get the MKA's into traffic. |
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