The Commonwealth Railways NB class originated in a shipment of four 0-6-0, 1067mm gauge, saddle tank steam locomotives built by the Vulcan Iron Works of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. They were imported to Australia in 1916 for construction work at the naval base at Henderson, Western Australia. Their tractive effort was 9500 pounds.[1]
In 1925 two of them (builder's numbers 2532 and 2533) were acquired by the Commonwealth Railways and placed in service on the Central Australian Railway as NB29 and NB30 respectively.[2] After shunting for two decades at Quorn, where they were nicknamed "pugs", the two locomotives were set aside.[2] NB29 was written off in 1946 and scrapped in 1958. NB30 was written off in 1950.[1]
In 1957, the frame and wheels of NB30 were used as the basis of a small diesel-hydraulic locomotive designed and built at Commonwealth Railways' Port Augusta workshops.[3] Retaining its number, NB30 was initially used in recovering rails from the closed Brachina–Hawker section of the Central Australia Railway, after which it was assigned to Quorn for shunting work. It was then transferred to Port Augusta for use as a workshops shunter, where it was withdrawn from service in 1972.
In 1979, NB30 was donated to the Pichi Richi Railway by the successor to the Commonwealth Railways, the Australian National Railways Commission, whose chairman, Keith Smith, had been the Chief Mechanical Engineer who had overseen its design., the heritage railway employed the locomotive on shunting duties.[2]
