Do you recall why the S Class was the bane of your grandfather's life?
According to this, the S Class was a pretty good engine:
Victorian Railways S class - Wikipedia
Paul
Hi Paul,
My maternal grandfather was Percival Cocks, District Rolling Stock Superintendent - DRS for the state of Victoria Railways, a railway engineer all his working life, he'd started as an apprentice fitter and worked his way up to DRS, a very responsible job.
I never met him, a veteran of Gallipoli, the after effects of his wounds plagued him until he died in 1957 - 2 years after I was born here in the UK, hence this is only what I was told by mum and what I have since read up
I was told by my mum, the DRS 's were only answerable to the Chief Mechanical Engineer, Chief Permanent Way Engineer - or what ever the guy who was responsible the actual rails etc etc etc title was, ....and the board of directors.
Grandpa was involved with the S class from not long after it's original inception on the drawing board at Newport Shops......and come it's initial trials the problems started to surface.
Reliability was the main bugbear, and as ''the pride of the fleet'' on express duties, every breakdown or late running caused major ructions, with Grandpa in the firing line,.......if an Express or Limited train was late, it made the news papers and the Directors wanted to know why??
Grandpa had many nights sleep broken by small hours phone calls, and no matter what the problem was, if it was an S class on his patch, he HAD to turn out, .......though he wasn't alone as the other DRS's suffered the same fate.
Only 4 were built, and while I believe they got most of the problems sorted, the S class's life was relatively short lived, and not generally considered a howling success.
I can just imagine an S class being clad in all that streamlining junk - which I didn't know about , so a big thank you, ...........only adding to Grandpas basket of woes.