A little 1912 Baldwin-built loco for the Victorian Powell Wood Process Company Ltd.

Friday Facts and FotosFriday 15th September 2023FFF 60. A little 1912 Baldwin-built loco for the Victorian Powell Wood Process Company Ltd.Most people have heard of the 3’6” gauge ASG garratts, some of which were built at Newport during the Second World War. However, not so well known was a small 2-4-0 tender locomotive built to a gauge of 3 feet which was not built at Newport, but was maintained there for the company which owned the Powelltown sawmill. Built by the Baldwin locomotive company of Philadelphia in the USA who built our first two Puffing Billy Na locomotives, ‘Little Yarra’ (LY) was built specially for hauling mixed passenger and goods trains between Powelltown and Yarra Junction on the Lilydale Warburton line. The timber company must have had some maintenance agreement with the VR because as new it was assembled at Newport and was returned there a number of times during its thirty years of service for major overhauls. Newport also did major overhauls for the company’s other “mainline” locomotive, a 0-6-0 called ‘Powellite’.As built in 1912 the locomotive was painted gloss black with lining in gold and red. After about four years the colour had been changed to red with white lining. The repainting probably occurred at the Newport Workshops, when the locomotive was there for its first major overhaul. Later – sometime in the 1920s – it was repainted in green. At this time it lost the lining and painted name on the tender. It also lost the wooden cowcatcher. In the summer a spark arrester was attached to its chimney. With it’s light axle load of only 6 1/4t and fully compensated suspension it was quite a sprinter, it featured in a few medical emergency speed runs, and could operate on the lighter tracks right out into the bush with sharp curves and up to 1 in 19 grades right to the end of the line. My thanks to Frank Stamford LRRSA for permission to use his article for these brief notes, and for use of photos from the John Buckland collection. The first is a Baldwin photo as built. The second a colourised photo of Little Yarra on a construction train in 1913 in the Yarra Junction yard only a few months after it arrived. The others show significant wear and tear after two or three decades working in the bush.