| Posted by JerryE on March 15, 2014 | |
A sunny Sunday or an enforced period of idleness due to events outside of the railways control...? This class of locomotive would normally have had almost constant employment moving trainload after trainload of coal, moving it from the coal pits to power stations. When introduced in the mid 1970s, and because British Rail's own workshops were running at near capacity, such was their urgent need, the first thirty of these locomotives were contracted out to Electroputere of Romania - unfortunately such was the low build quality that once delivered many needed to be all but rebuilt before actually entering revenue service in the UK! Needless to say, capacity was found in British railway workshops for the other 100 odd members of the original class total... To some extent these class 56 locomotives are close relatives to the Brush designed class 47's, this latter design being the starting point in quickly developing a similar but more powerful locomotive.
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