Mastodawn

Today's historic photo of the day: 40 years ago today, X34 heads a Geelong-bound VLine passenger #train through Werribee, Vic, March 22 1986

VR bought 24 X class locos in three series between 1966 and 1976. The first series locos, built in 1966 were mechanically similar to the streamlined S class, and they ran pretty much interchangeably with them on main line freight and passenger trains. Whilst they could run short end forward, the driving controls were optimised for long end running as here

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Railmaps Mar 22

Werribee is the western extremity of Melbourne's electric suburban railway network. Built as an intermediate station on the original Melbourne to Geelong railway, Werribee was originally served by Geelong trans, but as Melbourne expanded westward, it became a suburb and in late 1983 the first suburban electric train reached town. Thereafter, VLine Geelong trains continued to stop, but really only to pick up and drop off passengers to and from Geelong.

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Railmaps Mar 22

Since mid 2015, VLine trains to and from Geelong by-pass Werribee travelling via the newly constructed Regional Rail Link line via Wyndham Vale. Werribee is now solely a suburban station. The section west of Werribee to Manor (Junction with the RRL) is now not regularly used for passenger trains, although occasional goods trains do still run that way.

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Railmaps

In 1995 when VLine was split into passenger and freight entities, the X class were all assigned to freight haulage, and they were thereafter only rarely used on passenger trains. X34 has since been re-built as XR554 and is today in service hauling freight trains with Pacific National.