Picture of the week: Diesel mechanical locomotive, 1956

To celebrate the launch of our new*railway photos section*with over*3500 Creative Commons-licensed images from our collection, our staff are choosing some*one of their favourite photos for this blog. Here’s*Peter Thorpe, Search Engine Visitor Assistant:

This is a Brush Type 2 diesel, later to become known as the Class 31 and one of the many classes of diesel loco that were introduced as part of the British Railways Modernisation Plan of 1955. I like the image because it is the first Class 31, D5500, which now lives just below the Search Engine balcony in the Great Hall carrying its later number of 31018 – so everyone researching in Search Engine sees this engine.

​

Filed under: Picture of the week, Rail vehicle collections

 

Doesn't look much like a class 31 to me !

 

Agreed - it looks more like a Class 05 shunter bult by Hunslet [D2551-2616 series] based on an industrial design

 

The cab window arrangement & engine cowling look like those on Hunslet 5238 at Didcot:

File:BR Class 05 DL26 1.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To be fair to the NRM, the erroneous photo has been replaced with one of D5500:

National Railway Museum blog | Behind the scenes at the biggest railway museum in the world

P.

 

Must be the coupe version.

 

Nope, looks like a Hunslet shunter to me, as can be found at Didcot. Which is a diesel mechanical as the thread title suggests. 31s are diesel electric.