NZR Locomotives

A summary of published research

The history of the locomotives used by the New Zealand Railways (NZR) is both intriguing and complex, particularly during the early years. This is brought out in several published works which attempt to unravel the complexities of early numbering and classification systems. This page and its sub-pages are intended as a summary of some of that research.

The very early railway development in New Zealand was authorised by the Provincial Councils of the time, and all independent of each other, so any numbering of locomotives was also without any consideration of how things might develop in the future. By the time the Provincial Governments were abolished in 1876, a structure for a national railway network was already taking shape but it was not until two years later when the Railways Department and the Public Works Department were split as two separate entities, the Railway Department in charge of running trains and the Public Works Department in charge of building railways, among other things, that serious thought was given to how such things as a national locomotive numbering system could be established. Given the haphazard start to railways in New Zealand, and the time that has elapsed since then, it is little wonder that understanding all the steps along the way could become a challenging task, one that was ultimately taken up by a number of different researchers.

The earliest formal publication devoted to NZR locomotives was curiously published in the U.S.A., the work of Tom McGavin, summarising the results of the work of several NZR&LS members. An address was given to Society members by Tom in 1950 and a duplicated transcript of the talk made available. An expanded version of that, with illustrations, was then published in the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin 81 in the U.S.A. The work was titled ["The Steam Locomotives of New Zealand Government Railways 1872 - 1949"]. From this came the first New Zealand publication, "Steam Locomotives of New Zealand Since 1863" (1st edition 1950) with a second revised and enlarged edition in 1961. A complete update of the material covered by these early publications resulted in a set of three new volumes, Part one by T.A. McGavin dealing with 1863 - 1900, the other two by E.J. McClare, Part two dealing with 1900 - 1930 and Part three 1930 - 1971. These booklets still provide a very handy ready reference of the various steam locomotive types used throughout NZR's history.

The first attempt to document all the steam locomotives used on New Zealand railways was carried out by Bill LLoyd, and presented in a publication "NZR Steam Locomotive Lists 1880 - 1957". This was issued by the Railway and Locomotive Society as Supplement No.5 to their quarterly publication "The New Zealand Railway Observer". This first list was however not a complete story as it used the 1880 locomotive list (issued as an appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives) as a starting point, with no attempt to unravel and reconcile any earlier numbering systems. A further 10 years of research resulted in the publication of the first formal attempt to provide a complete register. The "Register of New Zealand Railways Steam Locomotives, published in 1974. 27 years later after much further research, an enlarged and revised edition was published in 2002. Both these edition are serious reference works, listing every locomotive of every class that worked on Government railway lines.

At the time of the centenary of New Zealand railways, a new work was published as a historical record of all classes of locomotives used by the New Zealand Government Railways, including Steam, Electric and Diesel. This was a collaborative effort by A. N. Palmer and W. W. Stewart and was titled "Cavalcade of New Zealand Locomotives" this is still a very useful reference, outlining all the locomotive types from 1863 to 1955 for the 1st edition, and to 1965 for the 2nd edition with a convenient Locomotive index and list of builders at the back.

During the early 1960's, Peter Dyer was compiling data on the Public Works Department steam locomotives, a more challenging task given the dearth of early records that existed. He subsequently published a booklet in 1966 titled "Steam Locomotives of the New Zealand Public Works Department".

A separate branch of locomotive research was carried out by Gerald Petrie, looking at steam locomotives in New Zealand other than those operated by NZR. This resulted in the publication of "New Zealand Steam Locomotives by Official Number" in 1993. This was followed 3 years later by "In the Beginning", a detailed look at all locomotive data between 1863 and 1877 in an attempt to unravel most of the mysteries that surrounded certain old locomotives. Then in 2007 a detailed analysis of all available data relating to the early numbering of New Zealand Railways locomotives "Locomotive Numbering from 1890 back to 1863 - The Evidence". This is a fully documented research effort with scanned copies of all early documents found to support the conclusions reached.

So far now the focus has been on steam locomotives, however in 2002 David Parsons published a book titled New Zealand Motive Power 2002 that reviewed each class of locomotive in use at that time. This was followed up with an updated version in 2018.

In 2011, Sean Miller published a completely up to date work titled "The NZR Steam Locomotive". This is a fine reference work covering each locomotive type including a short section on unclassified locos and steam railcars etc. It has many fine illustrations but lacks some details you would expect to find in such a well presented publications.

In 2001 Sean Millar published a somewhat controversial book titled "From A to Y excluding I", which was a first attempt at researching locomotive classification and included a fair bit of speculation where no evidence could be sourced. This was followed in 2018 by a new work, "Classifying New Zealand's Locomotives" being a more serious look at the classification issue including the diesel and electric models. The study of classification attempts to come to an understanding of why particular locomotive groups received the classification letters they ended up with, and why particular numbers were allocated to particular locomotives, perhaps irrelevant t5o the general rail-fan, but a fascinating conundrum to the serious researcher.

There is of course much more published material available, particularly articles in periodicals like the Observer and Railfan, however these tend to look at individual locomotive classes rather than the collection as a whole.

Tables of Locomotive Classes