British Rail Class 50 - Service

Service

The class were built for working passenger services on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) north of Crewe, to Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle and Glasgow Central. Services south of Crewe would generally be worked by an electric locomotive, with the Class 50s taking over for the journeys that continued north. Trains were often double-headed to deal with the steep gradients, such as Shap Summit and Beattock Summit. Due to the original build having a high fail rate double heading also increased the reliability of this service, a joke with train crews at the time was the class 50 pairing would only have a 50:50 chance of completing the journey with no failures.

By 1974 the northern WCML was electrified, and the Class 50 fleet was displaced by new Class 87 electrics. The fleet was transferred to the Western Region, working mainline passenger services from London Paddington along the Great Western Main Line to destinations such as Oxford, Cheltenham Spa, Bristol Temple Meads, Plymouth and Penzance. It was not unusual for locomotives to work services on other routes, such as the Birmingham New Street to Bristol Temple Meads corridor. The introduction of the Class 50s on these routes enabled the last remaining, non-standard, diesel hydraulic "Westerns" to be withdrawn.

In the late-1970s following the earlier withdrawal of the "Warships", BR decided to continue this naming policy, and as a result the Class 50 fleet were all named after Royal Navy warships. The first locomotive naming occurred in January 1978, when 50035 was named Ark Royal in honour of the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. The rest of the fleet was named during the course of 1978, concluding in October with 50029, which was named Renown after the Resolution-class nuclear submarine HMS Renown.

From 1977, British Rail introduced the Class 253 High Speed Trains onto the Great Western Main Line which began the displacement of the Class 50 fleet onto other routes, such as services to Birmingham New Street from London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads. The class also found work on the West of England Main Line from London Waterloo to Salisbury, Exeter and Plymouth. However, due in part to the over-complexity of the design, the class was plagued with reliability problems. As a result, the decision was taken in the late 1970s to refurbish the entire fleet.