Victorian Railways L class

The Victorian Railways L class is a class of electric locomotives built by English Electric and operated by the Victorian Railways and later V/Line from 1953 until 1987, primarily for the Gippsland line. They were the only class of main line electric locomotive operated in Victoria. They came out of Operation Phoenix, the early 1950s program of about 80 million pounds to rebuild a network badly run down by Depression-era underinvestment and wartime overuse, which included regrading, rerouting and electrification of the Gippsland line to Traralgon to serve Victoria's brown coal fields. Before them the only electric locomotives operated by the Victorian Railways were twelve small 620 hp types built in the 1920s at the Newport Workshops for suburban goods service, using the same General Electric traction motors and equipment as the Melbourne electric multiple unit fleet.