EF's on the Main Trunk - 12th of July 2019
30This is the footage from the 4th and final day of our trip to the Central North Island. After staying the night in Palmerston North, we headed back to Tauranga on the 12th of July, completing the trip in just over 9 hours.
On the way, we managed to see four freight trains. Curiously all of these trains were hauled by EF class electric locomotives, hence the title of this video.
The EF's were built by Brush Traction of Loughborough (England), entering service in 1988. They were built solely to run on the Hamilton to Palmerston North section of the North Island Main Trunk, which was electrified in the 1980s. 22 members of this class were built. Their weight is 107 tonnes, the length is 19.6 metres and the top speed is 105 kilometres per hour.
Their power output of 4,000 horsepower makes them the most powerful locomotives in New Zealand. The 2nd most powerful is the DL class, at 3,600 horsepower.
The first two members of the class - EF's 30007 and 30013 - arrived on the NIMT in 1987 to test the electrification system, with the 20 remaining engines entering service over the next two years. Interestingly the EF's are one of only three classes of NZ locomotive to have the BO-BO-BO wheel arrangement - the other two are the DJ and EW classes.
Although the class was mainly intended for freight service, they have been used on the Overlander passenger train from time to time up until it was replaced by the Northern Explorer in June 2012.
On the 7th of August 1991, EF's 30036 and 30088 were severely damaged in a washout at Oio. The two locomotives were damaged beyond repair, and scrapped in 2003 (30036) and 2007 (30088). So far these are the only EF's that have been scrapped, leaving 20 of them still in existence.
Despite this, only 12 EF's are still in service as of July 2019. 30065, 30128 and 30186 were retired in the early 2000s, and are currently in storage at Hutt Workshops. It is not known whether or not these three will ever return to service. More recently EF 30111 was withdrawn in 2015, and 30157 was withdrawn in November of that year after catching fire at Palmerston North.
In 2016, KiwiRail made the controversial decision to retire the remaining operational EF's and replace them with more DL's. However, they said they were to retain the overhead wires in case the need for electric locomotives ever arose again in the future. The new batch of 15 DL's arrived in October 2018, bringing the total number of DL's up to a disappointing 63.
Late in 2018, KiwiRail announced they had received capital funding from the government, which will eventually allow for 15 EF's to be overhauled and stay in service for at least another 10 years. As of July 2015, I still don't know which EF's these are, and none of them have been sent in for overhaul.