Victorian Railways R class 752.

Steam Locomotives

R class

The R class is a Victorian Railways 4-6-4 express passenger 'Hudson' locomotive. First introduced in 1951, they were the second last steam locomotive ordered and introduced by the VR.

The R class is a kind of hybrid of the 1945 Victorian Railways H class 'Pocono' locomotive, and resembles the large 4-8-4 express passenger/heavy goods locomotive in many elements, such as the boiler design, mechanical stoker and aesthetic appearance. The R class however does have a lighter axle load and shorter wheelbase, allowing it to travel a much larger area of the Victorian Railways.

All of the class were coal burners as introduced, with only two being converted to oil burning during VR operation. The distinctive SCOA-P wheels were designed for use on the R class, later appearing on the VR J class and locomotives in Tasmania and Queensland.

The SCOA-P wheel features a unique U-shaped cross section for strength and light weight. This locomotive is Steam Era Model's first locomotive kit. It consists predominantly of brass and whitemetal along with nickel silver etchings for certain elements such as the coupling rods.

The SCOA-P wheels were designed for the R class.

The vast majority of castings for buffers, headlight, lamps, valves, etc. are either lost wax brass or whitemetal castings. There is very little effort involved in cleaning flash and burs.

The motor is a Mashima type fitted horizontally in the boiler. All wheels feature stainless steel tyres and acetal centred wheels. There is plenty of room inside the boiler for the fitting of a DCC chip and/or sound decoder.

The kit comes with fully detailed instructions and pictures of the building process as well as exploded diagrams for ease of use. R752 features a paint scheme that was pretty much stock standard, with red buffer beams, red smoke deflectors and red lining along the sides of the running board and bottom of tender tank.