| Driving Wheels | 2ft 6ins |
| Weight | 11 tons |
| Boiler Pressure | 120psi |
| Cylinders | Outside – 8in x 15in |
| Tractive Effort | 3,072 lbf |
The New Zealand Railway (NZR) A class of 1873 consisted of three types of locomotives with similar specifications but different details. The earliest and most numerous were built by Dübs in Glasgow in 1873 who supplied 12 locomotives. The Yorkshire Engine Company in Sheffield supplied another 2 in 1875. The details above are for the Dübs engines.
The locomotives were initially ordered by the Public Works Department for use in the construction of lines in Canterbury and Taranaki. They were not just used by the Public Works Department; the New Zealand Government Railways also utilised the class to operate revenue services on smaller branch lines.
The locomotives quickly became outmoded for use on the lines they helped build and only one remained in government service by 1905. It was used on the Piha Tramway and later on NZR’s Stores Branch Piha Tramway. By 1906 all Dubs A class locomotives were out of service for NZR.
Whilst the locomotives were too small for operating on the NZR they were ideally suited to use on bush tramways and small private industrial sidings. Many members of the class survived for decades in private use.
This locomotive 193 was built by Dübs in Glasgow in 1873 for service with the NZR. It served with the NZR. In 1893 the locomotive was sold to the Gear Meat Company.
The Gear company was founded in 1874 by James Gear, a Wellington butcher, who saw the benefits of Petone for his expanding business. He acquired a cheap 12 hectare site on the foreshore at Petone where he considered that his slaughterhouse operations would be less likely to cause offence than at Wellington, but where rail and shipping services were close at hand. The Wellington to Wairarapa railway had been constructed in the 1870’s and the port of Wellington had become more easily accessible from the Hutt Valley.
Gear built the first jetty at Petone and procured an old ship which he fitted out with refrigeration equipment. Carcasses were loaded onto the hulk for freezing, then towed across Wellington Harbour for loading directly onto the ships moored in port. Gear’s first land-based freezers were not built until 1891.
There was not much livestock in the Hutt Valley, where Gear Meat Works was established in 1882. But its proximity to the railway on which the livestock arrived, and a port, Wellington, from which the meat was shipped, made it an optimal location for a meat freezing works. Shipping was important as New Zealand began exporting frozen meat to Britain in 1882. At its peak the plant handled 10,000 sheep and 600 cattle a day.
Petone became a booming as a working-class suburb of Lower Hutt and grew when Unilever established a factory around 1900 to make candles out of Gear’s tallow.
In earlier times environmental concerns were not a great consideration for the authorities. Blood and offal were discharged directly into the harbour from the Gear plant, attracting sharks in large numbers and in the words of the town clerk of the day “causing an unbearable stench from a considerable distance away”. Not surprisingly the factory was nicknamed the stink factory.
The locomotive was used to shunt the sidings of the works, goods mainly being livestock in and frozen meat out.
In 1915 the locomotive was acquired by Borthwicks at Paki Paki.
Thomas Borthwick began work as an apprentice butcher in his grandfather’s business in Edinburgh. Later he opened a butchery in Liverpool and Manchester and develop a large meat wholesaling distribution business.
During 1883 he became an agent for the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Company importing meat to England and moved his wholesale meat business to Smithfield market in London. This was the year after the first transportation of frozen meat from New Zealand. In 1895, his sons joined the business, becoming Thomas Borthwick & Sons Ltd.
Thomas Borthwick realised owning their own meat works would provide more certainty of supply. In 1904 Borthwick’s purchased a two hundred acre site near Paki Paki to establish a meat freezing facility. The locomotive was employed there from 1915 until 1931.
In 1931 Thomas Borthwick and Sons (Australasia) Ltd purchased the Feilding Farmers’ Freezing Company Ltd at Aorangi and the locomotive was redeployed there.
In 1939 the locomotive was converted to using petrol as a fuel but in 1948 it was modified again to be diesel powered.
In 1973 the diesel locomotive was acquired by the Bay of Plenty (BOP) Fertiliser Company in Morrinsville.
In the early 1990s the locomotive was based at the Tauranga Historic Village. Some years later it is understood to have moved to the Gisborne City Vintage Railway where it is stored.
Five other A class locomotives built by Dübs in 1873 are preserved in New Zealand
- Works number 647 – 67
- Works number 648 – 66
- Works number 651 – 64
- Works number 653 – 65
- Works number 656 – 62
Preserved Outside Britain – By Country
Preserved British Steam Locomotives 