During the late 19th century, Victorian Railways had ended up with a mixed fleet of locomotives of various designs, which had caused maintenance difficulties.

To solve this, Richard Speight, a VR commissioner who had worked for the Midland Railway, set out a program to adopt standardized locomotive designs based on British practices.

[1] In April 1890, Victorian Railways awarded another contract to David Munro & Company of South Melbourne.

Between 1919-1923, twenty were converted to match the nine existing shunters' 0-6-2T configuration (all bar 494 upgraded to 18-inch cylinders), while another twenty-five were withdrawn.

The locomotive was then selected for display at Spencer Street Station for the 100th anniversary of Victoria's railways as it was in good enough condition, ultimately sparing it from immediate scrapping.

E371 was moved to storage at Newport Workshops until the 1980s when it was bought by the Castlemaine & Maldon Railway Group.

It was eventually found out that the locomotive had sustained significant damage to parts of its frames and boiler, which was considered too costly to repair at the time.