Railways and Tramways of Australia

Chifley’s diesel

 

Commonwealth Railways diesel locomotive NJ1 was named ‘Ben Chifley’ in a ceremony at Bathurst on 17 April 1971.

 

During the late 1960s, the need for new motive power to operate on the Central Australia Railway (CAR) between Marree and Alice Springs led Commonwealth Railways to order six diesel-electric locomotives form Clyde Engineering. Built at Granville in Sydney, they featured a driving cab at one end and had 1500 horsepower (1119 kW) available for traction.

 

The six new locomotives were numbered NJ1–NJ6 and all commenced service during 1971.

 

In a ceremony at Clyde’s Kelso plant, near Bathurst, Chairman of Clyde Industries Sir Raymond Purves officially handed over class leader NJ1 to Commonwealth Railways Commissioner Keith Smith. Guests were then transported to Kelso siding, where Jacqueline Nixon, wife of Federal Minister for Shipping and Transport Peter Nixon, named the locomotive ‘Ben Chifley’ after the former Prime Minister. A flag was drawn aside to reveal the name and NJ1’s engine was started.

 

Before he entered parliament, Chifley had been a steam locomotive driver and worked for many years at Bathurst. Thirty former workmates of Chifley attended the ceremony.

 

NJ Class locomotives worked a range of trains on the CAR, including stock trains, general freight and The Ghan passenger train. The line was closed following the opening of the standard gauge railway from Tarcoola to Alice Springs in 1980.

 

The following year the NJ Class were re-deployed to South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, where they mostly worked grain and gypsum trains. They passed into private ownership in 1997 when sold to Genesee & Wyoming and were renumbered 1601–1606.

 

Two were subsequently sold for service overseas and one was scrapped. Now owned by Aurizon, three remain on the Eyre Peninsula, including 1601, formerly NJ1 Ben Chifley.

 

Bibliography

P Attenborough, ‘The Commonwealth Railways NJ Class – 40 years of service’, Australian Railways Illustrated, no. 10, October 2011, pp 32–43.

‘A locomotive named “Ben Chifley”’, Clyde News, vol. 7, no. 5, June/July 1971, pp 4–5.

‘CR names narrow gauge diesel-electric locomotive after former Prime Minister’, Railway Transportation, vol. 20, no. 5, May 1971, p 4.

S Fitzgerald, ‘The history of the NJ Class’, Motive Power, vol. 2, no. 3, October/November 2000, p 4–11.

Port Dock Station Railway Museum, Locomotives and Railcars of the Commonwealth Railways, Gresley, Adelaide, 1996.

C Walters, A guide to Australasian locomotion, 2023 edn, Australian Railway Historical Society (NSW Division), Sydney, 2023.