Wilmar Sugar has 20 Baldwin B-B locomotives ranging in mass from 24 t to 32 t. Of these, 19 have reversing boxes that are gear driven, similar in design and achieve forward/reverse shifting with a dog-clutch mechanism. The Australian sugar industry has an additional 25 Baldwin B-B locomotives. The first to enter service was the 26 t KILRIE in June 1972. Since then, the loads being hauled by the Baldwin locomotives have increased, to ensure an adequate supply of cane to the sugar mills, as their crushing rates have increased. This load increase has taken its toll, particularly on the drivelines and the current typical service life for the Baldwin locomotive reversing box between rebuilds is not acceptable. Furthermore, the reversing boxes have now been rebuilt many times and have surpassed their design service life. This is reflected in their increasing maintenance costs and in-service failures. To continue to operate the range of Baldwin locomotives, their reversing boxes must be replaced. Following extensive global driveline specialist enquiries, to identify a suitable commercially available solution, or part solution, it became apparent that it was necessary to undertake a first-principles approach to custom design and manufacture a reversing box for the specific duty. The evaluation of the reversing box duty requirement for the 24–32 t application with internationally recognised engineering standards found that the current reversing boxes were not appropriate for the expected duty. The design process for the revised reversing box identified several reliability concerns for the current design. One alternative to obtain an improved service life for the current design reversing boxes is to reduce the load limits for the range of Baldwin locomotives in service. An alternative approach was to design a reversing box capable of sustaining the required loads. A benefit that could be realised with this approach was that one reversing box could be designed to fulfil the duty requirement of the 24–32 t application, thus minimising spares requirement and inventory cost. This paper presents the reliability concerns identified with the current design reversing boxes and the design process adopted in realising a revised design for the 24–32 t application to overcome cost and reliability issues. An additional outcome is the development of a reversing box design that can be integrated into new locomotive designs that will replace the current 0-6-0 locomotives.