British Rail Class 91 - Fleet

Fleet

When British Rail was privatised, the white Intercity livery was progressively removed. New operator GNER applied their corporate livery of blue and red. When GNER lost their franchise in 2007, the red stripe was replaced by a white stripe containing the words National Express and East Coast. National Express East Coast originally planned to repaint all of their InterCity 225 sets in the white and silver NXEC corporate livery within two years. However, the collapse of NXEC in 2009 and its replacement with East Coast saw this repainting programme cancelled. As a result, 91111 was the only unit to receive the full National Express livery.

In June 2010, a new silver livery with purple stripe was unveiled by East Coast. As of February 2011, units 91101, 91106, 91107 and 91109 currently have this new East Coast livery. Unit 91101 has since been repainted in East Coast Maroon, with Flying Scotsman branding.

The Class 91 fleet has carried various nameplates applied in various batches and themes. In the period immediately after repainting into GNER colours in the late 1990s, all locomotives were briefly nameless. Having initially been applied to only a few locomotives in the early 1990s using cast-iron plates, eventually the whole fleet was named, many multiple times, until all were removed in 2008. In 2011, in response to customer requests, East Coast resumed the practice. It began by naming No. 91109 as Sir Bobby Robson with cast-iron plates, unveiled in a ceremony at Newcastle Central Station on 29 March by his widow Elsie and Alan Shearer.

Locomotive number 91023 was involved in both the Hatfield rail crash and the Great Heck rail crash - after refurbishment in 2001 it was renumbered 91132 (rather than 91123).

In November 2012, unit 91114 had a 2nd pantograph added as a pilot project to The project was operated jointly by Eversholt Rail Group, East Coast, ESG, Wabtec Rail and Brecknell- Willis. The new design uses the same mounting positions as a conventional pantograph but pairs two pantograph arms in an opposing configuration. if there is an ADD (Automatic Dropping Device) activation or the pantograph becomes detached, the train can keep going, so the system provides redundancy in the event of a pantograph/OLE failure.