As far as locomotives go, the introduction of the Class 66 was the biggest revolution for the UK’s rail freight operations in the modern era, being born out of the Privatisation of British Rail which began in 1994. In readiness for the sale, the British Railways Board split its freight business into six companies and the Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation emerged as the successful bidder for all but one, establishing English, Welsh & Scottish Railways (EWS) to run the operation. The sale was officially presented to the public in February 1996 and by May of the same year, EWS had ordered 250 new locomotives from General Motors’s Electro-Motive Division (EMD), to be constructed at its works in London, Ontario, Canada.
Having built the Class 59s over the previous decade, General Motors was in prime position to provide locomotives that could meet the required costs, performance and speed of delivery stipulated by EWS. In the Class 59 they had a design that was fully certified in the UK, and so to create the Class 66, the 59’s underframe and cab end design was re-used, with new equipment in between, incorporating new power units and the latest, state-of-the-art technology.
The first locomotive arrived in the UK in April 1998 and soon after, Freightliner, which obtained the sixth freight company from the British Railways Board, began placing orders for its own Class 66s. As further operators became established, they too were quick to acquire their own locomotives, and both GB Railfreight and DRS placed multiple orders during the build programme which had spanned almost two decades by the time the last Class 66 rolled off the production line in December 2015 – by which point EMD had been sold twice over, its name had changed to Electro-Motive Diesel, and production had moved to a new plant in Muncie, Indiana, USA.
A significant development in the Class 66 story came in the early-2000s when new emissions standards dictated a radical re-design, and locomotives completed from 2004 onwards were of the ‘low-emission’ variety. A revised power unit was fitted along with a larger radiator/cooler assembly, all of which required much more space than the original design afforded. The solution saw the new equipment intrude into the cab-to-cab walkway, necessitating an additional bodyside door to provide alternative access to the engine compartment, resulting in the two main Class 66 body types we know today – four-door and five-door locomotives. The additional weight that came with this new equipment meant that savings had to be made elsewhere, notably by reducing the size of the fuel tank, so that the locomotives remained within the required weight limits for route availability 7.
The implementation of evermore stringent emissions regulations heralded the end of Class 66 production and the last locomotive, No. 66779, arrived in the UK in February 2016 and was named ‘Evening Star’, the same name given to the last steam locomotive built by British Railways. By this time, 480 Class 66s had been built for UK operators and the type had also attracted orders from mainland Europe. Some of the European locomotives were ordered directly from EMD, others were purchase from UK operators after traffic reductions left them with surpluses. On the contrary, since 2016 GB Railfreight has expanded its fleet further by purchasing additional Class 66s ‘second-hand’, both from operators in the UK and on the continent, to meet its growing traction requirements.
Commonly referred to as ‘Sheds’ due to their appearance, today the Class 66 is the mainstay of British rail freight, so much so that by 2020 the type was providing the traction for 87% of daily freight services. There is no doubt that the Class 66 will continue to be a major part of the UK rail landscape for many, many years to come