Your top ten diesel & electric classes

23 if you include the prototype

 

It's not a Deltic that's what.

 

It's all about the sound sir, all about the sound.

 

And 3000+ HP.
There's no substitute for 2 Napiers going hard at it uphill (the good people of Batley know that after RSG flew up to Morley Tunnel with 'the pedal to the metal')

 

My list;
Deltic
4 Cor
4Rep
4 Cep
37
33
73
HST
Bulleid Raworth class 70
08
No real southern bias , but enjoyed seeing all these in service apart from the 70.

 

Class 37,Class 50,Class 52,Class 42,Class 35,Class 56,Class 58,Class 60,Class 31,Class 55,

 

My list, as with my top 10 steam classes, is very much a result of where I have lived and the journeys I have made. In no particular order but with the reasons for being on the list included:-

Class 55 Deltic - impressive visually, good performers and plenty of noise. Whenever I travlled on the ECML in the 1970s. I always tried to pick a train with a Deltic up front.
Class 33 - Part and parcel of life for many years if your home is former SR territory. A reliable do-anything class of loco. The sound of D6515 and 33111 at Swanage always brings back happy memories.
Class 73 - chosen for similar reasons as the 33, except they are still in use on the network today.
Class 71 - I shan't forget the spectacle of one of these racing through Ashford in the last days of the Golden Arrow. It would be great to see E5001 working again, but I won't hold my breath!
Class 50 - bring back happy memories of the Waterloo-Exeter line - one of my favourite stretches of railway
Class 52 Western - my first ever long distance journey hauled by a main line diesel was a special from Paddington to Totnes with D1012 Western Firebrand up front. I have liked the class ever since.
Class 35 Hymek - nicely proportioned machines and one of the most reliable classes of hydraulic. I still have fond memories from the early 1970s of looking out of the window from what was then Dorking Grammar School watching the lunchtime Redhill-bound parcels train pass by with a Hymek on the front.
Class 76 - there was always something rather exotic about the Woodhead line - a freight only route passing through some rather dramatic scenery. The 76s shared that sense of the exotic and mysterious. I'm glad I managed to ride behind a pair of them on a special before the line closed.
Class 92 - I am so impressed with their haulage capacity. I have taken several photographs of these locos working freights to Dollonds Moor and the train of wagons seemed to go on for ever!
Class 37 - Down south, 37s have always been our most common unusual visitors, if that isn't a contradiction. I've taken a good few pictures of them and have some enjoyable runs behind them too (especially in East Anglia) and enjoy the sound they make. My most recent trip behind one was from Corfe Castle to Wareham in 2017 when the Swanage Railway operated is trial service using WCRC stock. It reminded me how much character these locos have.

 

My 10 are as follows
1. Class 37- There's one in particular I really like can you guess what one?

2. Class 20- Like the Class 37 built like a tank, will keep going as long as you get the parts for them. Nice sound too.

3. Class 40- They sound great! Also had so many good times behind 12, 106, 122, 135 and 145.

4. Class 50- Growing up on the SVR things that go Dub Dub Dub Dub have been something I've grown up with. Came to something when 50008 came past work last year and I remarked to my bosses 'that's 50008' 'how can you tell?' It sounds like a 50 and it's the only one in Laira blue.

5. Class 68- Again so many good times on the Wherry Lines with them, they sound like Someone mated a Deltic with a Hymek

6. Hymek- Looks, Style and noise , cracking little machines.

7. Small Sulzers 24,25,26 and 33- Ideal for preserved lines, plenty of noise and well suited for secondary routes, having the NYMR's 25 all the way back from Whitby to Pickering a few years ago was quite the experience!

8. 87- The Noise! A few years ago on a course in Wigan I escaped for the evening and went for a drink in Carlisle, boy those things can shift!

9. Class 08/09- Nothing fancy or pretentious just get the job done.

10. One for the future, Class 23, Really looking forward to see how this one turns out.

 

I worked on DP2 a few times in the mid-1960s with the English Electric representative at Clarence Yard - it belonged to EE, not BR. I do recall a phase when it was putting out more power than it should at one point.

 

OK here goes my take on this theme:

1] The North Eastern [ok it's a] Petrol Electric Railcar,

2] 13 the North Eastern 1-c-1 [?] Express Electric loco, the unfulfilled dream. The electrification of the York - Newcastle section of the ECML, in 1920.

3] The North Eastern B0-Bo electris used on coal trains Newport [Thornaby] - Shildon Nos 3-12.

4] 1-2 the Newcastle quayside Bo-Bo electrics No 1 surviving at Locomotion in Shildon.

5] The Tyneside Electric EMUs. A baggage van survives at the Stephenson Museum on North Tyneside.

6] Northumbrian, Tyneside Venturer and Lady Hamilton all built by Armstrong Whitworth on Tyneside and later bought by the LNER. AW were pioneers in diesel traction in the early thirties before pulling out to concentrate on military hardware.

7] The aforementioned English Electric type 4s aka class 40/whistlers.

8] The Harton Electrics in South Shields. OK the originals were built by Siemens of Germany pre-Great War. But the latter post war loco's were built by amongst others English Electric. One survives in working order at the Stephenson Museum on North Tyneside coupled to a Harton Coal Company waggon full of batteries to power her.

I've run out of ideas as to others, most have already been mentioned. So 8 will do for now. As for the industrials the title doesn't specify mainline or industrial........

 

DELTIC
Never really knew the baby Deltics
FALCON
Western
Warship
BTH type 1
Brush 2
EE 3
Brush 4
Class 59
EE type 1

Honourable mention - Hymeks

Worst ever - NB type 1

 

D1002
D1001
D1003
D1004
D1005
D1006
D1007
D1008
D1009
For the those of you who remember the
the Searchers ‘Needles and Pins’ I quite like D9007 .

 

Class 43 (253/254l In addition to their sheer longevity, IMHO, the IC125s are the trains wot saved our rail network ... even if the original disc pads stank to high heaven under heavy braking.

Class 251/261 In many ways, the Blue Pullmans were progenitor to the IC125. One really should've been saved.

Class 52 Despite being convinced the eardrum shattering noise of the Whizzos, under the roof at Paddington, was responsible for my tinnitus, having two engine units turned out to be a pretty good ides. More recent developments rather vindicates BR(W)'s view that hydraulic transmission was the way to go .... they evidently just 'went' with the tech a bit too early.

Class 55 Although the 'Deltics' proved an evolutionary dead end, these were the first diesels capable of sustained 100mph operation in regular service ..... plus I'd get lynched if I didn't include 'em.

Class 73 (well, the whole BR(S) electro-diesel family) These were a jolly good idea long before anyone coined the term 'bi-modal'. The recent rebuild of some of these veterans surprised me.

Class 24/25/26/27 The once ubiquitous 'Rats' just 'got on with it' .... pretty much everywhere.

Class 33 As useful as their little brothers. The 'Cromptons' are included due to their flexibility, with adaptations permitting PP operations, at a useful rate of knots with 4TC stock, beyond the juice rail.

Class 37 Vying with Class 20 (and the 08s) to be the last survivors of 1st gen diesels, but as true mixed traffic machines, surely the best value for money of any 'modernisation plan' investment.

Class 08 Just amazing survivors and immensely useful. You could even regularly see a couple pottering around under the station roof here in Brighton.

Motor Rail 'Simplex' these pioneering IC locos faithfully served the industrial NG in this country for many decades. Still jolly useful kit for many a preserved line.

I'm not sufficiently well versed in BR's electric traction to identify specific classes, but going on the sort of criteria employed with diesels, choices would be predicated on technological advances. Tilting trains should get a mention here, so a 'big up' for APT-P, APT-E and the Pendolinos is in order. Leaving DC locos, units (and motors) aside, AC traction motors, non-rheostatic electronic controls and regenerative braking loom large in my thinking. That said, I've a short pre-grouping Role of Honour:

Magnus Volk. A consistently underrated pioneer of electrical engineering, whose electric railway (the first in these islands) still gives pleasure to thousands, year in, year out, in Brighton. As well as electrically lighting Prinny's Beach Hut in 1883, t'is said he also owned the town's first telephone, begging the question ..... who did he call?

Sir Vincent Raven. Even though his ideas on mainline electrification were stillborn, clearly a man ahead of his time.

C&SLR who made 'tube' travel possible. Above ground, the LOR (pioneering in many ways) deserves mention, as do LYR/LNWR/NER/LSWR and Frank Hornby (OK, different scale, but you get the idea). All owe a debt to Magnus Volk.

LBSCR They had the right idea ... and who knows what might've transpired, had Franz Ferdinand worn a bullet proof vest that day in Sarajevo, and the 6.6kVAC OHLE had reached Brighton before grouping.

 

My selection: (diesel and electric locomotives)

1. Class 66
2. Class 37
3. Class 43 HST (with Valenta engine!)
4. Class 68
5. Class 47
6. Class 50
7. Class 55
8. Class 31
9. Class 08/09
10. Class 90