Class 20s: what might have been
PHILIP HAIGH reflects on little-known attempts to transport the famous English Electric Class 20 overseas… to Northern Ireland
With their long noses and whistling engines, English Electric’s Class 20s remain a distinctive sight. A few still run on Network Rail tracks, while others ply preserved railways.
English Electric built 228 examples of its Type 1 locomotive, powered by the company’s eight-cylinder 8SVT diesel engine, with two twin-axle bogies. It also exported a variant to Portugal (the ‘1400’ class), fitted with more powerful 8CSVT engines.
While Class 20s operated over wide parts of Great Britain, they never made it to the other part of the United Kingdom - Northern Ireland. That’s despite interest in them from the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA).
UTA Chairman George Howden offered in 1961 to pay the running and maintenance costs for an EE Type 1 to run in Northern Ireland as a demonstrator. Before it could do so, EE would have to convert one from standard track gauge to Ireland’s wider 5ft 3in gauge.
It was the conversion work that led to EE Chief Rolling Stock Engineer John Dowling writing to his company’s traction projects department in Bradford on December 7 1961, asking for the costs to convert one locomotive.
Dowling explained that this would need new axles, traction motor distance pieces, headstocks and transoms for the bogies. Irish standard buffers and drawgear would be fitted in place of BR gear, and there would be other minor work to cope with the wider bogies, such as alterations to brake pipes and handbrake linkages.
In rather rapid time, EE came up with an initial estimate of £ 3,500 to convert a locomotive to 5ft 3in gauge and then back to 4ft 8½in. The work might take two and a half months, but in a letter of December 12 1961, EE’s commercial manager is clearly in a hurry and has his mind on wider orders.
He writes: “Mr Wild’s estimate of [the] time required to effect the conversion mentioned above is 2½ months. Although the demonstration is primarily required in the UTA if it is to have any effect on forthcoming CIE [Compas Iompair Eireann - Irish state railway] tenders it will be necessary to have a locomotive in service on the CIE early in February. In this connection, Dr Andrews, Chairman of CIE, did say he would be prepared to give every facility for demonstrating a locomotive should we wish to send one.”
To the conversion costs would be added delivery charges by ferry across the Irish Sea. When all was totalled, the estimate came to £ 9,382, according to EE’s analysis sheet of January 22 1962.
No locomotive was ever converted and English Electric’s efforts appeared to be in vain.
Further notes suggest that UTA was still interested in new locomotives. EE tendered in February 1964 for five or 12 locomotives, noting that UTA had called for locomotives “as nearly as possible identical with the BRB Type 1 design”. Chief Traction Projects Engineer A S Robertson writes on February 13 that the locomotive should include provision to control a train-heating oil-fired boiler on the train, include provision for power to be increased from 1,000hp to 1,100hp, and with a maximum speed of 70mph and the ability to raise it to 80mph.
Again in 1965, UTA is asking for a quote for four 1,000hp Bo-Bo locomotives. EE proposes a converted Type 1 (Class 20) which it was still building for BR. Indeed, EE notes a possible approach from UTA direct to BR for locomotives out of its order.
In addition to the obvious changes to bogies and new compensating beams to cope with UTA’s tighter vehicle gauge, EE proposes redesigning its Type 1 dragboxes to accommodate buffers pitched 6ft 3in apart, because UTA wants buffing and drawgear to match that on its multiple units. Costs come in at £ 30,968 per locomotive for mechanical parts and shipping.
What isn’t mentioned is weight, despite the low axle loads permitted on Northern Ireland’s tracks. The specification Great Northern Railway (Ireland) used for its locomotives was a 15-ton axle load. GNR(I)’s Northern Irish
lines passed to UTA in 1958 with their low axle-load enduring.
A Class 20 weighs 73 tons, giving an 18.25t axleload. There’s no mention of lopping 13 tons from its Class 20 design in Dowling’s 1961 letter, or in subsequent estimates. Nevertheless, UTA Chairman George Howden must surely have known his railway’s limitations when he offered to pay running and maintenance costs for an EE Type 1 demonstrator.
Almost a decade earlier, English Electric had tendered an A1A-A1A design using an 8SRKT engine driving four traction motors. It weighed 84 tons - and with this spread over six axles, gave an axle load of 14 tons. Therefore, the company must have known of Ulster’s lightweight track.
Nothing came of this earlier design, or the later Class 20 proposal.
Eventually, Northern Ireland was to receive new diesel locomotives when Hunslet designed and BREL built three in 1970. By this time, both UTA and EE had disappeared into history. Yet Hunslet’s design contained an 8CSVT diesel engine, of EE design (the type fitted to its Portuguese exports), and used a shorter-wheelbase variation of the bogies used under Class 20s.
Unlike Class 20s, Hunslet’s 101 Class locomotives only lasted a decade in front-line service. One survives today - 102, sitting in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. For those who know what’s inside its body, it’s a hint of what might have been for Ulster’s railway had UTA and EE agreed to a Class 20 conversion.