Class 58 History | Railfreight
Historic Liveries & Operations
Railfreight
The Class 58 emerged at exactly the moment British Rail’s freight business was redefining its public image. The result was one of the most distinctive diesel liveries of the 1980s — a bold Railfreight scheme that became synonymous with heavy coal traffic, modern freight operations and the early identity of sectorised BR.
Freight had always been an essential part of Britain’s railways. From the pre-grouping companies to the ‘Big Four’ and, later, nationalised British Rail, goods traffic remained a core part of railway operations. By the early 1980s, the freight fleet included many of BR’s established diesel classes, while at Doncaster Works a new modular locomotive — the Class 58 — was being constructed for use primarily on MGR coal traffic.
1982 Class 58 enters service
50 Locomotives built
Toton Entire class initially allocated
Railfreight Original BR sector livery
The background to Railfreight
During the design stage of the Class 58, several drawings were prepared to show how the locomotives might appear in a variety of liveries, including maroon and even large-logo BR blue, which at the time remained the standard finish for British Rail locomotives.
However, as construction of the first few locomotives got under way in 1982, British Rail’s sectorisation programme began to take shape. This marked a shift away from a centrally controlled corporate structure towards a number of semi-independent, business-orientated sectors operating under the overall control of the BR Board.
It was therefore decided that the new Class 58s would not emerge in standard corporate blue, but instead in a fresh livery intended to symbolise a more modern identity for British Rail’s Railfreight business.
The task of developing this new appearance fell to the BR Design Panel in conjunction with the Freight Director’s office in Derby.
How the livery was developed
In the end, a mid-grey bodyside was chosen, partly because it could be applied not only to the Class 58s, but more widely across the freight fleet, giving different classes a more unified appearance.
The BR Design Panel then turned its attention to the cabs. While yellow front ends were already mandatory for visibility, the panel decided to give the cabs full yellow treatment. This not only strengthened the new Railfreight identity, but also improved visibility in the dusty colliery environments where the Class 58s were expected to spend much of their working lives.
On conventional monocoque locomotives such as Classes 37, 47 and 56, the underframe generally blended into the bodyside colour. On the Class 58, however, the narrower central body and full-width cabs made this approach visually awkward.
Contemporary American locomotives often used a third colour on the solebar to break up the bodyside, and this idea influenced the 58’s final appearance. Black was considered first, but proved visually flat. When a red solebar was tried, it complemented the grey and yellow perfectly and delivered the more striking image the Design Panel wanted.
A large white BR double-arrow logo was then added across the bodyside, effectively creating Railfreight’s own interpretation of the earlier large-logo style.
A further radical decision followed: the word Railfreight would appear on the cab side as part of the livery itself. This was highly unusual. British Rail diesel locomotives had long carried BR insignia, but had not previously used sector wording as an integral element of the paint scheme.
Even then, the final form of the logo was not decided immediately. The earliest version was simply the word Railfreight in black on the yellow cab side. A second version added a black border around the name. Neither was considered sufficiently eye-catching, so the final arrangement became a solid red panel with a white border and the word Railfreight in white.
Photographs of 58001 carrying the earliest versions of these pre-production logos are extremely unlikely to exist. When the locomotive was first rolled out at Doncaster, the logo reportedly changed from the first version to the second, and then to the final design, all within the space of around an hour.
Rollout and identity
On unnamed locomotives, the Railfreight logo was carried centrally on the secondman’s side of the cab. When 58020 and later 58034 were named, the position of the logo changed to accommodate the nameplates. A further variation appeared on the next five named locomotives — 58039, 58040, 58041, 58042 and 58050 — which had their cab-side Railfreight logos removed and replaced with cast Railfreight plates mounted on the cab front.
On Thursday 9 December 1982, Doncaster Works formally handed over the first Class 58 to British Rail at a ceremony at ‘The Plant’. During the event, BR Freight Director Henry Sanderson unveiled the Railfreight logo on 58001. In that sense, the act arguably amounted to a locomotive naming, even though the same identity treatment was later carried by the rest of the class and by many other freight locomotives.
Despite what is sometimes assumed, all fifty Class 58s emerged from Doncaster Works in the Railfreight livery, including 58050. However, because of the extensive testing associated with the SEPEX system fitted to that locomotive, it never operated solo on a revenue-earning train in this scheme.
The success of the Railfreight livery was such that it was soon applied to a wide variety of other diesel classes, including Classes 20, 26, 31, 37, 47 and 56.
Even so, the red solebar treatment was generally reserved for locomotives with an obvious visible underframe, notably Classes 20 and 26. Other types repainted into Railfreight grey and yellow typically retained only red bufferbeams. These repaints were undertaken as locomotives passed through works for overhaul or major repair.
The first non-Class 58 to receive the Railfreight livery from new was 56135. More locomotives followed, painted at several depots including Crewe, Doncaster, Stratford, Thornaby and Tinsley, each introducing small variations and local customisations.
The result was a livery that quickly became the new national identity of BR Railfreight, fulfilling the aims the Design Panel had set out to achieve at the beginning of the 1980s.
From early 1987, Railfreight began to modify the scheme slightly by extending the Class 58-style red solebar treatment to other classes that carried the livery. Even this, however, proved relatively short-lived with the arrival of the later triple-grey sub-sector schemes.
Class 58 operations with Railfreight
Entry into traffic
Delivery of the Class 58s from Doncaster Works to Toton, following testing at Derby RTC, soon led to driver training at the Nottinghamshire depot. Drivers at Toton quickly remarked on the superior cab comfort and overall working environment compared with the 1970s-designed Class 56s to which they were accustomed.
This was no accident. During the design stage, the drivers’ union had been consulted, and the cab had been designed around the needs of the driver rather than purely around engineering constraints.
MGR coal traffic
Rather than replacing the Class 56s outright, the Class 58s were intended to work alongside the ‘Grids’. Their principal role was the Merry-Go-Round coal circuit, hauling rakes of MGR hoppers from collieries to power stations and returning empty for the cycle to begin again.
Midlands stronghold
With all fifty locomotives allocated to Toton, the class soon became a familiar sight across the Midlands. As crew training spread to locations such as Worksop and Bescot, the locomotives began to appear over a much wider area of the English network, including regular trips to the Southern Region around London and to the Western Region as far as Didcot.
Even so, the class rarely strayed far from its true heartland in the Midlands.
Other freight work
Although designed primarily for coal traffic, the Class 58 proved to be a versatile freight locomotive and was successfully employed on a variety of other duties. During the 1980s miners’ strike, the class could often be seen hauling Speedlink services and also appeared regularly on Freightliner and fly-ash trains.
When the strike ended and coal production resumed, the class largely returned to the MGR circuit, but it could still occasionally be found on other flows. Examples included the Saturdays-only Birmingham Lawley Street to Nottingham service and Birmingham Lawley Street to Southampton Freightliners in 1987, usually worked by Saltley crews where a spare 58 was available. On the Southampton workings, however, the locomotives operated only as far as Reading.
Passenger appearances
As a designated freight locomotive, the Class 58 had no electric train supply and therefore no regular passenger diagrams, since it could not power on-train services such as air conditioning or heating. That said, this did not prevent the class from appearing on railtours, drags or failed-train assistance duties.
Precisely because they were relatively uncommon on passenger trains, the Class 58s quickly developed a following among enthusiasts when they did appear on such workings.
Detailed notes and variations
All fifty Class 58 locomotives carried Railfreight livery from new, but a number of variations and individual differences appeared across the fleet.
58004 had white handrails on the cab fronts and was missing one Railfreight logo at the No. 1 end from new. This omission was never corrected retrospectively.
58020, when named Doncaster Works BREL, had the cab-side Railfreight logo moved to a higher position to make room for the nameplate immediately below.
58020, when later renamed Doncaster Works, lost its cab-side Railfreight logo and instead received a cast Railfreight plate on the front of the cab.
58034, when named Bassetlaw, had the cab-side Railfreight logo positioned lower down the cab to allow space for the nameplate and crest above.
58035 to 58050 carried an orange cantrail stripe which extended onto the cab sides and all the way around the front of the cab.
58039, 58040, 58041, 58042 and 58050 all emerged in the standard livery with orange cantrail stripe, but when named they received small cast Railfreight plates on the front ends and their cab-side Railfreight logos were removed.
58049, when named Littleton Colliery, had its cab-side Railfreight logo removed. However, cast Railfreight plates were never fitted to the front ends.
A number of locomotives carried small unofficial black rabbit motifs applied at Toton next to the data panels. 58002 and 58004 were among those known to have carried these markings.