The J class' distinctive SCOA-P wheels.

Steam Locomotives

J class

The J class is a Victorian Railways 2-8-0 light lines 'consolidation' locomotive. First introduced in 1953, they were the last steam locomotive ordered and introduced by the VR.

The J class is virtually an updated design of the highly successful K class locomotives. The J class provided a high boiler and firebox to enable easy conversion to standard gauge at a later date.

Despite this, none in the class have been converted under the VR while J512 is currently undergoing restoration and gauge conversion by Seymour Railway Heritage Centre.

J500-529 were coal burners and J530-559 were oil burners. All locomotives featured the distinctive SCOA-P wheels which were designed for use on the R class 'Hudson' locomotives of the VR. These wheels were a unique type with 'U' shaped spokes featuring the strength advantage of boxpok wheels without the additional weight.

This locomotive is Steam Era Model's third locomotive kit. It consists predominantly of brass and whitemetal along with nickel silver etchings for certain elements such as the coupling rods. The vast majority of castings for buffers, headlight, lamps, valves, etc. are lost wax castings with exceptional finish.

Steady as she goes!

There is very little effort involved in cleaning flash and burs.

The motor is a Mashima type fitted vertically in the firebox to drive the last driving wheel. All wheels feature stainless steel tyres and acetal centred wheels. There is plenty of room inside the tender for the fitting of a DCC chip and/or sound decoder, or, an N scale decoder should fit well inside the boiler.

The kit comes with fully detailed instructions and pictures of the building process as well as exploded diagrams for ease of use.

J524 features a paint scheme used mostly for coal burners, with red buffer beams, red smoke deflectors and lacks the red lining underneath the footplate of the locomotive that was painted almost exclusively on oil burners.