Passchendaele memorial locomotive

A^B 608, Passchendaele, on display at New Zealand railways’ centennial celebrations in
Christchurch in 1963

In 1925 the minister of railways, Gordon Coates, agreed to a proposal to name a steam locomotive ‘in memory of those members of the New Zealand Railways who fell in the Great War’. More than 5000 railwaymen served overseas between 1914 and 1918 (out of a total workforce of 14,000), and 447 were killed. After considering the names Somme, Le Quesnoy and Ypres, Coates chose Passchendaele.

Passchendaele's memorial plate

The locomotive selected to carry the name was A^B 608. Built at Christchurch’s Addington railway workshops in 1915, this was the first of the famed class of A^B ‘Pacifics’ – probably the most successful and versatile locomotives ever to run on New Zealand railways. More than 140 of these engines were produced between 1915 and 1926.

The gleaming Passchendaele was one of the stars of the show at the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin in the summer of 1925-26. In 1927 it was chosen to haul the Duke and Duchess of York’s royal train in the South Island (a role it had also performed, unnamed, during the Prince of Wales’s tour in 1920).

The memorial nameplates fitted to the engine’s flanks were removed during the Second World War. They were later put on display at Christchurch and Dunedin railway stations, where they have remained ever since (apart from a spell in 1963, when the plates were temporarily restored to the locomotive for New Zealand Railways’ centennial celebrations in Christchurch).

By the time it was withdrawn from service in 1967, A^B 608 had steamed more than 2.4 million kilometres. It is currently undergoing restoration at Paekakariki, north of Wellington.