Highly commended

GB Railfreight Class 92 Fleet optimisation The NRA judges felt that despite being the most powerful locomotive to ever operate in Britain, and the only locomotive able to operate freight trains through the Channel Tunnel and on High Speed 1, the ‘92s’ have never realised their intended potential.

Judges said that over-complexity and over-sensitivity of systems has dogged the fleet, manifesting itself in terms of poor reliability and frequent shutdowns wherever tight electrical tolerances were exceeded.

GB Railfreight owns 16 Class 92s, although not all are operational. They are used on Frethun-Daventry intermodal trains and on domestic freight trains, while GBRf also supplies the locomotives to Caledonian Sleeper.

These various operations require a high-powered locomotive, and with investment in the CAF Mk 5 Sleeper stock, GBRf decided to implement a modification programme to reduce the sensitivity of the ‘92s’ and implement a reliability modification programme. This has worked, and modified locomotives are now operating on the Sleepers and freight trains.

In terms of performance, 14 out of 16 Class 92s are available, and they are exceeding 50,000 miles per casualty. Two locomotives returning to traffic have been out of use for almost 20 years, and spent long periods in the open in France before being resurrected.

Judges felt that applying engineering innovation to obtain a fleet of highly reliable, highly powered locomotives has allowed GBRf to grow the business at a much-reduced cost, rather than buying new. To see engineers providing a solution to a business need in such a cost-effective way was appreciated by the judges.