NZR RM class (Leyland diesel)
Encyclopedia
The NZR RM class
Leyland diesel railcar or Midland railcar was the first diesel-powered vehicle to enter revenue service on New Zealand
's national rail network
. Two were built, RM 20 and RM 21, and they commenced service in August 1936 as temporary short-use vehicles that would operate until better, larger rolling stock became available. Due to their diminutive and lightweight design, they are sometimes called "railbuses" rather than railcars. They operated primarily on the Midland Line
and the Greymouth
-Hokitika
portion of the Ross Branch.
These railcars should not be confused with the Leyland experimental petrol railcar
of 1925.
(NZR) had been looking for an economic means of handling regional and rural passenger traffic for over two decades. Branch line
s in rural New Zealand were typically operated by mixed train
s that carried both passengers and goods, and their schedules were usually slow due to the loading and unloading of freight that occurred during the journey. This slowness made them unpopular with travellers, but insufficient demand existed to justify a dedicated passenger service. Secondary main lines in regional districts often had their own passenger trains, but these were often uneconomic, especially as car ownership and bus competition rose in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, NZR investigated railcars as an alternate means of providing an attractive passenger service without the expenditure and costs associated with a locomotive-hauled carriage train.
The first experiment with railcars took place in 1912 with a MacEwan-Pratt petrol railcar
, and while it was not a success, further research and development was undertaken in the following years. By 1936, no design had proven successful enough to warrant construction of a whole class, though an Edison battery-electric railcar
built in 1926 had proved efficient and popular until it was destroyed by fire in 1934, and it might have been replaced with a similar railcar or expanded into a fleet if it were not for the financial constraints imposed at the time by the Great Depression
.
In 1936, NZR and a newspaper company were looking into the development of a railcar to provide quick conveyance of both passengers and Christchurch Press
newspaper
s from Christchurch
to Westland
: although long-term prospects for large railcars existed, a more immediate solution was required. For this experiment, NZR utilised a diesel-engined Leyland bus chassis to create a small railbus. Two were built at Hutt Workshops in Petone
and entered revenue service in the South Island
.
s unladen. Power was provided by a Leyland 8.6 litre diesel engine that could produce up to 70 kW
at 1,950 rpm
and propel the railbus at speeds of up to 80 km/h. Electric lighting and thermostatically controlled hot air radiators were both fitted Up to 19 passengers could be carried, though a full load of a tonne of newspapers meant only 13 could fit.
Initially, the two railcars had one technical difference: RM 20 was built with a four-speed manual gearbox, while RM 21 utilised a fluid torque converter
. Not long after services began, RM 20 was also fitted with a fluid torque converter.
in July 1936 demonstrated that the railcars could cover a distance of 160 km in 2 hours 8 minutes with the 80 km/h top speed successfully maintained. Their regular services were subsidised by the Christchurch Press and the first service of the day was timetabled to allow swift delivery of the morning edition of the paper. The first timetable came into effect on 3 August 1936 with a 2:20 am departure from Christchurch, arriving in Greymouth at 6:40 am and Hokitika at 7:55am, soon changed to 7:45 am. Two local return services were operated from Hokitika: a morning trip to Reefton
(cut back to Greymouth by August 1938) and an afternoon trip to Greymouth. The return service left Hokitika at 4:25 pm, called at Greymouth at 5:42 pm, and reached Christchurch at 10:23 pm.
The service between Greymouth and Christchurch was almost two and a half hours quicker than the steam-hauled
West Coast Express passenger trains of the time. The railcars initially covered 526 miles (841 km) a day, reducing to 434 miles (694 km) when the Reefton service was cut back to Greymouth.
The railcars' operating lives were mostly uneventful, but while operating the afternoon service to Greymouth on 18 January 1937, one was involved in a fatal accident north of Hokitika when it jumped off the rails at a level crossing
near Arahura. 19 passengers and 3 railway employees were aboard; William Jeffries, a Hokitika auctioneer, was killed and twelve were injured. The derailment was caused by loose stones on the track that were scattered by a herd of cattle that had recently crossed the line; the front wheels left the rails while the rear ones did not, and the railcar in this condition travelled for 2.5 chain
s (50 m) as the driver unsuccessfully sought to stabilise and stop it. After this point, the rear wheels also left the rails as the front wheels dropped over the side of an embankment
, and three chains (60 m) from the level crossing, the railcar had spun so that it faced in the direction opposite to that which it was travelling. The top of the railcar separated from the bottom, with the bottom half coming to rest fifteen feet from the line down the side of the embankment while one end of the top half lay on the line. The railcar was subsequently repaired and returned to service.
was introduced into service. It took over the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday trips from the Leyland diesel railbuses on 28 October 1940, the Leylands continuing to operate on other days. In 1941 more Vulcans arrived, replacing the Leylands, and in 1942 the Leylands were dismantled at the Addington Workshops in Christchurch.
The Wairarapa railcars
that entered service five weeks after the Leylands were similar, in that they were also based on the principle of a bus, but were much larger, accommodating 49 passengers, and were designed specifically to operate over the steep Rimutaka Incline. They ran until the closure of the incline in 1955.
NZR RM class
The RM class is the classification used by the New Zealand Railways Department and its successors given to most railcars and railbuses that have operated on New Zealand's national rail network. As NZR and its successors has operated many diverse types of railcars, alternate names have been given...
Leyland diesel railcar or Midland railcar was the first diesel-powered vehicle to enter revenue service on New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
's national rail network
Rail transport in New Zealand
Rail transport in New Zealand consists of a network of gauge railway lines in both the North and South Islands. Rail services are focused primarily on freight, particularly bulk freight, with limited passenger services on some lines...
. Two were built, RM 20 and RM 21, and they commenced service in August 1936 as temporary short-use vehicles that would operate until better, larger rolling stock became available. Due to their diminutive and lightweight design, they are sometimes called "railbuses" rather than railcars. They operated primarily on the Midland Line
Midland Line, New Zealand
The Midland line is a 212 km section of railway between Rolleston and Greymouth in the South Island of New Zealand. The line features five major bridges, five viaducts and 17 tunnels, the longest of which is the Otira tunnel.-Freight services:...
and the Greymouth
Greymouth
Greymouth is the largest town in the West Coast region in the South Island of New Zealand, and the seat of the Grey District Council. The population of the whole Grey District is , which accounts for % of the West Coast's inhabitants...
-Hokitika
Hokitika, New Zealand
Hokitika is a township in the West Coast Region of New Zealand's South Island, south of Greymouth, and close to the mouth of the Hokitika River. According to the 2006 census, the usually resident population of the Hokitika urban area was 3,078, a decrease of 12 people since 2001. A further 828...
portion of the Ross Branch.
These railcars should not be confused with the Leyland experimental petrol railcar
NZR RM class (Leyland petrol)
The Leyland experimental petrol railcar was a unique railcar built and trialled in New Zealand in 1925. It should not be confused with the two much smaller Leyland diesel railbuses of 1936....
of 1925.
History
The New Zealand Railways DepartmentNew Zealand Railways Department
The New Zealand Railways Department, NZR or NZGR and often known as the "Railways", was a government department charged with owning and maintaining New Zealand's railway infrastructure and operating the railway system. The Department was created in 1880 and was reformed in 1981 into the New...
(NZR) had been looking for an economic means of handling regional and rural passenger traffic for over two decades. Branch line
Branch line
A branch line is a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line...
s in rural New Zealand were typically operated by mixed train
Mixed train
A mixed train is a train that hauls both passenger and freight cars or wagons. In the early days of railways they were quite common, but by the 20th century they were largely confined to branch lines with little traffic. As the trains provided passengers with very slow service, mixed trains have...
s that carried both passengers and goods, and their schedules were usually slow due to the loading and unloading of freight that occurred during the journey. This slowness made them unpopular with travellers, but insufficient demand existed to justify a dedicated passenger service. Secondary main lines in regional districts often had their own passenger trains, but these were often uneconomic, especially as car ownership and bus competition rose in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, NZR investigated railcars as an alternate means of providing an attractive passenger service without the expenditure and costs associated with a locomotive-hauled carriage train.
The first experiment with railcars took place in 1912 with a MacEwan-Pratt petrol railcar
NZR RM class (MacEwan-Pratt)
The NZR RM class MacEwan-Pratt petrol railcar was the first railcar to run on New Zealand's national rail network, though it was never used in revenue service. It was built in 1912 at a time when the New Zealand Railways Department was seeking alternative methods of providing rural passenger...
, and while it was not a success, further research and development was undertaken in the following years. By 1936, no design had proven successful enough to warrant construction of a whole class, though an Edison battery-electric railcar
NZR RM class (Edison battery-electric)
The NZR RM class Edison battery-electric railcar was a popular and successful railcar that ran in Canterbury, New Zealand for eight years. The prototype was arguably the first successful railcar in New Zealand but it was not developed into a class...
built in 1926 had proved efficient and popular until it was destroyed by fire in 1934, and it might have been replaced with a similar railcar or expanded into a fleet if it were not for the financial constraints imposed at the time by the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
.
In 1936, NZR and a newspaper company were looking into the development of a railcar to provide quick conveyance of both passengers and Christchurch Press
The Press
The Press is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is owned by Fairfax Media.- History :The Press was first published on 25 May 1861 from a small cottage in Montreal Street, making it the oldest surviving newspaper in the South Island of New Zealand. The first...
newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s from Christchurch
Christchurch
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...
to Westland
West Coast, New Zealand
The West Coast is one of the administrative regions of New Zealand, located on the west coast of the South Island, and is one of the more remote and most sparsely populated areas of the country. It is made up of three districts: Buller, Grey and Westland...
: although long-term prospects for large railcars existed, a more immediate solution was required. For this experiment, NZR utilised a diesel-engined Leyland bus chassis to create a small railbus. Two were built at Hutt Workshops in Petone
Petone
Petone is a major suburb of the city of Lower Hutt in New Zealand. It is located at the southern end of the narrow triangular plain of the Hutt River, on the northern shore of Wellington Harbour...
and entered revenue service in the South Island
South Island
The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...
.
Technical specifications
The railbus used chassis of a Leyland Tiger bus, though once its body was constructed it did not look like a bus. It had four wheels, was 7.6 metres long, and weighed 8 tonneTonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s unladen. Power was provided by a Leyland 8.6 litre diesel engine that could produce up to 70 kW
Kw
kw or KW may refer to:* Kuwait, ISO 3166-1 country code** .kw, the country code top level domain for Kuwait* Kilowatt* Self-ionization of water Kw* Cornish language's ISO 639 code* Kitchener–Waterloo, Ontario, Canada...
at 1,950 rpm
Revolutions per minute
Revolutions per minute is a measure of the frequency of a rotation. It annotates the number of full rotations completed in one minute around a fixed axis...
and propel the railbus at speeds of up to 80 km/h. Electric lighting and thermostatically controlled hot air radiators were both fitted Up to 19 passengers could be carried, though a full load of a tonne of newspapers meant only 13 could fit.
Initially, the two railcars had one technical difference: RM 20 was built with a four-speed manual gearbox, while RM 21 utilised a fluid torque converter
Torque converter
In modern usage, a torque converter is generally a type of hydrodynamic fluid coupling that is used to transfer rotating power from a prime mover, such as an internal combustion engine or electric motor, to a rotating driven load...
. Not long after services began, RM 20 was also fitted with a fluid torque converter.
In service
Although they were only meant to be a temporary solution, the authorities who devised their schedule expected a lot from them. Before entering service, a trial run from Christchurch to TimaruTimaru
TimaruUrban AreaPopulation:27,200Extent:Former Timaru City CouncilTerritorial AuthorityName:Timaru District CouncilPopulation:42,867 Land area:2,736.54 km² Mayor:Janie AnnearWebsite:...
in July 1936 demonstrated that the railcars could cover a distance of 160 km in 2 hours 8 minutes with the 80 km/h top speed successfully maintained. Their regular services were subsidised by the Christchurch Press and the first service of the day was timetabled to allow swift delivery of the morning edition of the paper. The first timetable came into effect on 3 August 1936 with a 2:20 am departure from Christchurch, arriving in Greymouth at 6:40 am and Hokitika at 7:55am, soon changed to 7:45 am. Two local return services were operated from Hokitika: a morning trip to Reefton
Reefton, New Zealand
Reefton is a small town on New Zealand's West Coast region, some 80 km northeast of Greymouth, in the valley of the Inangahua River. State Highway 7 passes through the southern part of the town, and State Highway 69 runs north to connect to State Highway 6...
(cut back to Greymouth by August 1938) and an afternoon trip to Greymouth. The return service left Hokitika at 4:25 pm, called at Greymouth at 5:42 pm, and reached Christchurch at 10:23 pm.
The service between Greymouth and Christchurch was almost two and a half hours quicker than the steam-hauled
Steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...
West Coast Express passenger trains of the time. The railcars initially covered 526 miles (841 km) a day, reducing to 434 miles (694 km) when the Reefton service was cut back to Greymouth.
The railcars' operating lives were mostly uneventful, but while operating the afternoon service to Greymouth on 18 January 1937, one was involved in a fatal accident north of Hokitika when it jumped off the rails at a level crossing
Level crossing
A level crossing occurs where a railway line is intersected by a road or path onone level, without recourse to a bridge or tunnel. It is a type of at-grade intersection. The term also applies when a light rail line with separate right-of-way or reserved track crosses a road in the same fashion...
near Arahura. 19 passengers and 3 railway employees were aboard; William Jeffries, a Hokitika auctioneer, was killed and twelve were injured. The derailment was caused by loose stones on the track that were scattered by a herd of cattle that had recently crossed the line; the front wheels left the rails while the rear ones did not, and the railcar in this condition travelled for 2.5 chain
Chain (unit)
A chain is a unit of length; it measures 66 feet or 22 yards or 100 links . There are 10 chains in a furlong, and 80 chains in one statute mile. An acre is the area of 10 square chains...
s (50 m) as the driver unsuccessfully sought to stabilise and stop it. After this point, the rear wheels also left the rails as the front wheels dropped over the side of an embankment
Embankment (transportation)
To keep a road or railway line straight or flat, and where the comparative cost or practicality of alternate solutions is prohibitive, the land over which the road or rail line will travel is built up to form an embankment. An embankment is therefore in some sense the opposite of a cutting, and...
, and three chains (60 m) from the level crossing, the railcar had spun so that it faced in the direction opposite to that which it was travelling. The top of the railcar separated from the bottom, with the bottom half coming to rest fifteen feet from the line down the side of the embankment while one end of the top half lay on the line. The railcar was subsequently repaired and returned to service.
Replacement
In 1940, the first Vulcan railcarNZR RM class (Vulcan)
The NZR RM class Vulcan railcars were operated by the New Zealand Railways Department in the South Island of New Zealand. All New Zealand railcars were classified as RM, and these were known as Vulcan railcars, from the name of the manufacturer, Vulcan Foundry of Britain. - Background :On 9 May...
was introduced into service. It took over the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday trips from the Leyland diesel railbuses on 28 October 1940, the Leylands continuing to operate on other days. In 1941 more Vulcans arrived, replacing the Leylands, and in 1942 the Leylands were dismantled at the Addington Workshops in Christchurch.
The Wairarapa railcars
NZR RM class (Wairarapa)
The NZR RM class Wairarapa railcar was the first truly successful class of railcars to operate on New Zealand's national rail network...
that entered service five weeks after the Leylands were similar, in that they were also based on the principle of a bus, but were much larger, accommodating 49 passengers, and were designed specifically to operate over the steep Rimutaka Incline. They ran until the closure of the incline in 1955.