GB Railfreight 69014 was released from the Arlington Fleet Services paint shop at Eastleigh on March 19, sporting a variation of the livery once carried by trial locomotive HS4000 Kestrel in the late 1960s.
GB Railfreight 69014 was released from the Arlington Fleet Services paint shop at Eastleigh on March 19, sporting a variation of the livery once carried by trial locomotive HS4000 Kestrel in the late 1960s.
Unlike 69012, which is now in a version of the green livery of another trial locomotive (D0280 Falcon from the 1960s), and which was named Falcon 2, 69014 is not going to be named Kestrel 2.
Instead, at a ceremony at Longport on March 26, it was named EMD Longport in recognition of the collaboration of EMD working on the project with GBRf.
GBRf still has the final three Class 69s to repaint. 69013 is already in traffic in undercoat and is due to move to Eastleigh soon, while 69015/016 are both still in construction.
The latter is all but complete and close to being testing (in undercoat), before it too moves to Eastleigh for painting.
69015 will be the last to emerge, owing to the fact that its donor body locomotive (56009) needed a lot more corrosion work, having been out of traffic from March 1996.
HS4000 Kestrel was a Brush testbed locomotive with a 4,000hp Sulzer 16LVA24 engine that was built in 1967-68 for trials on BR.
No orders were forthcoming (it was too heavy for most work), and the locomotive was sold to Russia in 1971 and scrapped in 1993
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4756 - 27/03/2025 16:04
I had the privilege of sitting in the cab of kestrel when I was 4 years old ,the locomotive was on display at Derby works where my Grandfather was a boilersmith/Mechanical engineer, I can't remember much about the day but my Grandfather said I didn't like the crowds that gathered round HS4000.