Victorian Railways R class

The R class was a 4-6-4 Hudson express passenger steam locomotive that ran on the Victorian Railways in Australia from 1951 to 1974, replacing the ageing A2 class 4-6-0. The Victorian Railways broke with its policy of building its own steam locomotives and awarded the contract to the North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow on 21 September 1949; the order was raised to 70 locomotives in January 1950. They had bar frames, a mechanical stoker and roller bearings, and testing showed a peak of 1,840 drawbar horsepower. R 703 entered service on 27 June 1951 and R 769 on 23 September 1953. Diesel-electric and electric power soon displaced them, but seven survive and four were restored to run heritage trains.