The colourful Clas

DAVID STAINES presents a selection of old liveries on new GB Railfreight locomotives

Brightening up the railway scene, GB Railfreight has re-visited some historic BR-era liveries and embellishments on its Class 69 locomotives, as they are being released into traffic. Although designated as a ‘new’ class, the ‘69s’ utilise the body shells and bogies of former Class 56 locomotives which they still visually resemble.

Internally, the original Ruston-Paxman engines have been replaced by the General Motors EMD 710 as installed in the Class 66s, with associated new electronic control systems and complete internal rebuilds.

Introduced in 1976, the first 30 of the 128-strong Class 56 fleet had been controversially built by Electroputere in Romania. But many of this batch were found to suffer from a relatively poor assembly quality, particularly in relation to wiring, and required extensive work once in the UK. The rest of the Class were built at Doncaster and Crewe.

With two out of the current six Class 69s now in traffic being former Electroputere products, these locomotives have now gone through their third extensive rebuild.

The conversion process is carried out by Progress Rail at Longport, from where they are dispatched in undercoat to Eastleigh for final painting.

There has been no lack of anticipation as to what colour each example might be sporting on dispatch from the paint shop.

RMayflower

Bob Tiller CM&EE

After the obligatory visit to Eastleigh, 69003 emerged (as did 001) in standard GBRf livery but with ‘speed whiskers’ applied to the front end. This striking embellishment has not been seen on the national network since the 1960s, when it featured on the prototype Deltic and various DMU classes. It is seen to good effect as the locomotive approaches Wadhurst with the 1230 Mountfield-Southampton gypsum empties on April 21.

At the time of this photograph, this convoy represented the entire operational Class 69 fleet. GBRf 69003 in undercoat is on its own delivery run, making its way south amid autumn tints near Dunton Green as the 0936 Peterborough-Tonbridge West Yard on November 2 2021. Accompanying it, 69001 has a variant of GBRf’s house livery featuring the Union Jack and the flag of the United States. The name is a further nod to Anglo-American relations. The BR large logo livery applied to 69002 shows up well in the landscape and looks particularly at home on the former Class 56 bodyshell.