Full steam ahead in revisiting past glories for Newcastle Flyer steam engine
Like an echo of an era past, the 3801 Newcastle Flyer steam engine stands ready to hit the rails again at the NSW Rail Transport Museum.
Known to many as one of the Newcastle “Flyer” steam engines, the 3801 has run the rails across Australia since 1943, visiting all state capitals bar Darwin and Hobart.
Having ventured as far as Perth and deep into Australia’s Red Centre at Alice Springs, the 3801 is a workhorse and testament to Australian skills and expertise.
Repainted in its 1952 Special Green colours, the 3801 now returns to public display at the NSW Rail Museum, after going in for repair in 2009.
The first of 30 fellow steam engines, the 3801 was the first of the last coal-fuelled steam powered locomotives built for the NSW rail fleet.
The huge 200 tonne engine was built by Clyde Engineering as Australia was caught in the middle of World War II.
Its entire integral steel frame is a single cast piece of metal weighing almost 40 tonnes and still boasts its original boiler which was repaired as part of the latest restoration.
Transport Heritage NSW Rail Workshop Manager Ben Elliot said the 3801 was the only steam engine of the 38 fleet still operational.
“A steam engine is very much an alive piece of machinery, it’s almost like it lives and breaths,” he said.
“It’s the raw power and the direct correlation of that human input that I find fascinating.”
The huge steam engine ran the rails between 1943 and 1965, before being condemned in 1967 as NSW moved to diesel.
In its heyday the 3801 set the record for the fastest time from Sydney to Newcastle.
The 3801 returned to service briefly as an engine on the Western Endeavour, a train service which ran from Sydney to Perth in 1970.
In 1983 the engine was relocated to the State Dockyard for reconstruction before once again returning to service in 1986.
The steam engine was withdrawn from service in 2007 needing major boiler repairs after decades of touring around Australia.
New boilers were shipped to Australia in 2010 and then again in 2015 for the 3801, but due to a number of technical issues they could not be used and the decision was made to reuse the original boiler.
Repairs to the original boiler were made in Goulburn by K and H Ainsworth Engineering, in 2016.
The sleek steam engine can hold 36,000 litres of water, churning through almost 570 litres each mile and one tonne of coal per kilometre, to power its boiler.
A team of more than 30 volunteers and paid staff worked on the 10-year project of rebuilding the 22.5 metre engine.
Much of the original body of the 3801 was pulled apart before being refurbished and rebuilt.
Having passed an adhesion test, hauling 318 tonnes up NSW’s steepest railway line between the Hawkesbury River and Cowan in Sydney’s north, the 3801 was given the all-clear to return to the rails.
Originally slated for a 27 March relaunch, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the display of the 3801, but visitors can see the steam engine at the NSW Rail Museum in Thirlmere.
Four locomotives of the 38 class are in preservation, but the 3801 is the only one still operational.
Transport Heritage NSW has several other steam-powered locomotives in its collection.
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