British Rail Class 20 Locomotives
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British Rail Class 20 Locomotives

Pip Dunn

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eBook - ePub

British Rail Class 20 Locomotives

Pip Dunn

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About This Book

The first of the English Electric Type 1 design, what we now know as the Class 20s, appeared in June 1957. With their distinctive 'chopper' engine sound, these single-cabbed locomotives soon gained a reputation for rugged reliability brought about by their simplicity and use of tried and tested components. British Rail Class 20 Locomotives looks back at the operations of these fine locomotives since 1957, covering their varied workings and duties, regional use and railtour operations. The book also covers the technical aspects and specifications of the locomotives, including liveries and detailing. This book will be of great interest to all railway and diesel loco enthusiasts. Fully illustrated with 195 colour photographs.

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Information

Publisher
Crowood
Year
2016
ISBN
9781785000997

CHAPTER ONE

THE NEED FOR THE CLASS 20S

The English Electric Type A, later Type 1, Bo-Bo freight diesel – the ‘Class 20’ as we have known it since 1968 – has been a part of the UK’s rail system since June 1957, yet remarkably, in 2015, with the design fast approaching its sixtieth anniversary, some are still working on the main line and in industry today.
That is testament to the simplicity, robustness and dependability of a type of locomotive, which let’s face facts, certainly has the look of a steam age product.
And that is because, in the mid-1950s, a steam-driven British Railways was in desperate need of cutting costs, and the switch from steam to diesel and electric traction was seen as one solution. The railways were still suffering from the inevitable, and understandable, lack of investment caused by World War II. The nationalization of 1948 had brought together a motley selection of steam locos, some of which dated from pre-grouping, indeed some even from the nineteenth century!
Because of the war, the country’s railways lagged behind in the development and introduction of modern traction, but the late 1940s and early 1950s had seen some drives to embrace the new form of traction by the ‘Big Four’ – the Great Western, Southern, London Midland and Scottish and London North Eastern Railways – and later, from 1 January 1948, the fledgling nationalized British Railways. These companies had dabbled firstly with diesel shunters, and the LMS in particular was on the case for main line diesel traction.
Diesel locos offered major advantages over steam traction. They were cleaner, safer, more efficient and – especially – easier to operate. They offered huge operational savings over steam. In theory they could also be operated by one man – impossible on a steam loco, but in the unionheavy days of the 1950s, single manning was not really on the radar.
Nationalization didn’t stop the quest for diesel power, and if anything it finally accelerated it. In 1955, BR really took the bull by the horns and started its modernization programme, which led to small batches of prototype main line diesels – known as pilot scheme locos – being ordered from different manufacturers, in different power brackets and for different traffic types.
This process has been well documented, but fourteen different designs were ordered in small batches ranging from three to twenty locos, so that 174 new locos were ordered from 1955. The first were to be delivered in 1957, and the first Class 20, D8000, was the first of these locos to be handed over to British Railways. It is also well recorded that the pilot scheme idea did not work as intended because BR scrapped the idea of testing and evaluating these trial locos, and instead went on to make mass orders based on theory rather than practice. For the full story of the pilot scheme locos, recommended reading is The Modernisation Plan by David Clough (Ian Allan 2014).
Of those 174 locos, twenty were English Electric Type A Bo-Bos fitted with EE’s 8-cylinder 1,000hp 8SVT engine. These locos were one of three batches of Type A locos; the other two designs – of which ten locos each were ordered – came from British Thomson Houston and North British Limited.
The twenty EE locos were numbered D8000–19 and featured just one cab with the engine and generator housed in a narrow body so giving a limited forward vision when being driving bonnet first, but similar to driving a steam loco. That said, when driving from the cab end, visibility was superb and better than, or at least as good as, any other type of loco, diesel or electric, and far superior to a steam loco.
Being a Type A, no provision for train heating was made as the locos were intended for working freight trains. They did, however, have a through pipe running the length of the body with a steam-heat hose at each end, enabling them to work in multiple or tandem with a steam-heat loco and still allow heating to the train.
The transition to diesel power at Devons Road shed (1D) on 31 August 1957. A new Class 20 D8003 stands in stark contrast with the two grubby Class 3F ‘Jintys’ 47483 and 47560 on each side of it. BRIAN MORRISON
The locos had multiple working of the Blue Star code, which meant they could work with other similar locos – not just their own class but any type of Blue Star loco – under the control of one driver. Up to four of the locos could work together.
The Class 20s had one major drawback, and that was their poor visibility when being driven with the bonnet end leading; in later days, when single manning was allowed on the railways, it was still a requirement that a single 20 being driven bonnet first was double manned. Its two rival Type A designs, the BTH D8200 Class 15 and the NBL D8400 Class 16, were worse, because their cabs, although offset at one end, still had bonnets whichever way they were driven.
As mentioned, the plan had been to test these forty Type A pilot scheme locos of three designs with a view to ascertaining which was the best, and placing mass orders of that type. It didn’t work out that way, however, and while no more D8400s were ordered, the D8200 design won a repeat order for thirty-four locos, while the Class 20s won repeat orders for, initially, 108 locos, and ultimately another 208 machines.
By the time the first loco of this second order, D8020, was delivered in October 1959, the first twenty machines had been in traffic and were already proving their worth. Those pilot scheme locos were allocated to a new purposebuilt diesel depot at Devons Road, in Bow in East London. They were used on local trip freights but could also work in pairs on heavier trains.
EE had a good reputation for reliable engines, and this was the case with the 8SVT. Maintenance staff had easy access to the power unit via a series of large doors on the side of the body, which made repairing running faults or changing components much easier than the cramped working areas on other diesel types.
Heavier maintenance, like any diesel, required a visit to a works or a major depot, where lifting equipment was available to hoist the loco off its bogies or remove the engine totally, via the roof, as was the case with other designs.
Because the locos did not have steam-heat boilers, their availability was better – all too often early diesel types failed because the steam generators were not working properly and so train heating could not be supplied. Of course, the downside of not having train heating in use on passenger trains was their being restricted to the warmer months, or in times of emergency in which case the passengers would endure a cold journey.
The restrictive view when being driven bonnet first was not a major hindrance in their early days, as crews had been used to driving steam locos with their even more restricted view. However, by coupling two locos together with their bonnets inner facing, the Class 20s went from being a Type 1 to a Type 4 unit of 2,000hp, excellent visibility and the ability to pull a heavy train – heavier than many of the largerpowered Type 4s!
As the railways changed their operating practices in the 1960s as a result of the publication of Dr Richard Beeching’s report Reshaping of the Railways in March 1963, short trip freights were slowly abolished and heavier trainloads were more commonplace. This meant a pair of 20s was a more than capable piece of kit as a ‘Type 4’.

More Locos

D8020–49 were delivered in 1959 and differed slightly from the pilot scheme locos by having round as opposed to oval buffers. Included in the order was a batch of locos, D8028–34, destined for Scotland, while the others, D8020–027/ 035–049 were destined for the Home Counties – working mainly from London and the southern part of East Anglia.
D8006 had been sent to Scotland in 1958 for trials and proved successful enough for the region to request its own locos. Those initial seven locos were destined for the Highlands, based at Inverness and Kittybrewster (in Aberdeen), and differed from the other batch of locos by having snowplough brackets, tablet catching equipment and larger side windows.
The next batch of locos was D8050–69, destined for Tinsley in Sheffield; they were similar in design to the D8020–27 batch, but had different traction motors, the 8B design as opposed to the 5D. These were delivered to BR between March and June 1961, and were soon followed by a larger order for more locos for Scotland, D8070–127, which were the same as D8028–34 in design. These were delivered from June 1961, and it was BR’s intention to stop with a fleet of 128 locos, the last of which was D8127 in July 1962.
All 128 locos had cab-mounted folding discs for train identification and bodyside ladders at No. 1 – the nose-end – to assist staff working on the locos. However, as more lines were upgraded with overhead electrification, these ladders were removed as it was perceived they posed a risk to anyone using them under live OLE.
Construction was split between EE’s Vulcan Foundry at Newton-le-Willows in Merseyside and Robert Hawthorn & Stephenson at its Darlington works. The use of two works was because EE’s site did not have the capacity to build at the rate that BR wanted its new diesels (it was also building Class 40s and 55s), so D8020–34 and D8050–127 were built in the north-east.
After release from Vulcan Foundry, locos were tested with a full train of nine or ten coaches along the steeply graded West Coast Main Line to Carlisle, giving EE and BR staff the chance to check that all was well with the locos before their entry into traffic. Those locos built at Darlington were tested on the ECML.
When D8127 was delivered in July 1962, it was expected to be the last Class 20. BR had concern over using Class 20s when running bonnet first, despite the fact that in the 1960s, trains were double manned with a second man – the former fireman from steam days. His role on a freight train was limited (on passenger trains he would operate the train heating boiler), but when running bonnet first with a Type 1, he would help the driver on signal sighting.
But BR was still not happy with this method of operation – though why is mystifying, as steam operation had always been like this. It was no surprise, then, that it was duly wooed by the Clayton Company’s Type 1 design – the twin-engined D8500 Class 17. It duly ordered 117 Class 17s without any testing whatsoever, and when they proved to be very unreliable due to serious engine defects, the easiest option was to replace them with 100 more, proven, Class 20s.
An undated shot from 1957 shows a brand new pilot scheme Class 20 passing Hest Bank water troughs with a test train after construction at EE’s Vulcan Foundry. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
This meant EE won another order for the 20s. Being four years on from delivery of the last locos, there were some cosmetic changes to their appearance, but the rest of the loco design was the same. Out went the disc headcodes, and instead the four-character train roller blinds for displaying reporting numbers were fitted instead. On the cab end the change was quite crude, a great big box attached on the front, while at the nose end, it was a little subtler in its design.
The locos all had snowplough brackets, but the smaller side windows. Despite BR blue being first seen on Class 47 D1733 in 1964, it was not until 1966 that it was adopted as the standard new livery, so the first locos rolled off the production line in BR green, albeit with yellow panels from new. The change to BR blue happened midway through construction, with D8178 the first delivered in blue.

Technical Appraisal

The locos were constructed with a heavy-duty steel frame with the cab at No. 2 end. No. 1 end is commonly known as the nose end, and locos were referred to as being driven ‘cab’, ‘nose’ or ‘bonnet’ first.
Starting at No. 1 end, the equipment fitted to the locos on the frame comprised the traction motor blower and compressor in the nose end, with filters on each side of them. Next came the exhausters, with the header tank above. This area had the first set of side doors, of which there five sets along the length of the body, and a sixth door on the A side.
The radiator and fan system came next, in between large, full height body grilles. The fan-drive gearbox was then connected to a propshaft, which connected to the engine.
The 8-cylinder ‘V’ engine took up the bulk of the floor space on the frame, and along with its EE 819-3C main generator and EE 911-2B auxiliary generator, fixed towards No. 2 end, was flanked by four sets of opening (and removable) doors. The generator sat behind a set of grilles and another, and final, set of doors. On the B side there was no door but another set of grilles.
Eastfield’s 8123 suffered minor damage in early 1973 and was sent to Derby Works for repair. The repairs cost £950. The loco was renumbered in November of that year, and dual braked the following year. DAVE THORPE COLLECTION
In between the main generator and ...

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