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Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028816

RAIL TRANSPORT GBRAILfreight CLASS 99 LOCOMOTIVE Green Signals: Inside a Class 99 – The UK’s Most Powerful Locomotive PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRd5MApsqTs
Inside a Class 99 – The UK’s Most Powerful Locomotive Green Signals Jul 1, 2025 ✪ 14.6K subscribers ... 98,003 views ... 4.2K likes Members first on June 30, 2025 #locomotive #trains #GBRailfreight An exclusive tour inside GB Railfreight’s brand new Class 99 locomotive at UK Rail Leasing’s depot in Leicester. 8,000 horsepower in electric mode and 2,400hp in Diesel mode, this is a serious beast of a freight locomotive and the most powerful standalone locomotive built for the UK by Stadler. #locomotive #trains #GBRailfreight Subscribe: If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. Better still, hit that subscribe button. It supports the channel and means you'll be notified whenever we publish something new. Membership: If you want to see even more from Green Signals, including exclusive content, become a member and support the channel further too. Green Signals: YouTube - / @greensignals Patreon - / greensignals Website - http://www.greensignals.org Shop - http://greensignals.etsy.com Newsletter - http://www.greensignals.org/#mailing-... X (Twitter) - / greensignallers LinkedIn - / green-signals-productions-ltd Instagram - / greensignallers Credits: Presenters - Nigel Harris (@railnigel on X) & Richard Bowker CBE (@SRichardBowker) and General Manager: Stef Foster (@stefatrail) Peter Burgess COMMENTARY This pleases me ... all about technical progress ... and a lot of positive decisions. Such a contrast to Trump and politics and greed. It saddens me that this technical / engineering progress is not pure British, but involves Switzerland and Spain ... but at least the railway dimension is British. I do not know why major British engineering has been overtaken by others ... but surmise that it is something to do with the increasing role that economics and finance are playing in major corporate decision making. Britain has established a good reputation and high profile in this arena which has become fashionable but in my view completely lacking in substance. My views on this are based on two things: (1) my academic education at Cambridge when I was young and (2) a variety of real world experiences over my quite long adult life (I am now 85 years old). A year after I left Cambridge and was employed at Davy United as a 'management trainee' I returned to the University Engineering Department to attend a 'management conference'. It was a firly high profile event and the Managing Director (MD) of my employer was in attendance. I remember him asking a question of one of the academic panels why it was that the university was 'so far behind' indusrial practice. At the time I thought it was a very relevant question, but only half the question that was needed. I also wanted to know why 'industry' was so far behind academic thinking! Around this time ... the 1960s ... the 'Graduate Business School' started to emerge with the Harvard Business School in the United States, perhaps the best known. There was nothing like HBS in the UK at the time in the early 1960s, so I satisfied my need for more business and management undersstanding by training to become a Chartered Accountant. I did this training with Cooper Brothers & Co (CB&Co) in London ... the accounting firm that remains at the core of perhaps the top accounting firm in the world which is PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Peter Allan, one of my Sidney Sussex College contemporaries ... we were also partners in the college 'fives' team ... also chose to train with Cooper Brothers in London and subsequently became the Managing Partner of the UK firm. While we both became 'Chartered Accountants', we also had similar Cambridge undergraduate experience ... Peter Allen studied Natural Sciences while I studied Mechanical Sciences (Engineering). Peter Allen resigned from Coopers following the Maxwell debacle ... a situation where the Coopers audit failed to identify a huge fraud in the Mxwell organization that came to light after Maxwell committed suicide. This video does not give any insight as to why British railway engineering no longer has a dominant position in the global industry. My hypothesis is that the essential cors problem is that 'finance' has become the goal and the driver of decisions, and 'finance' can thrive in a virtual world, completely devoid of any tangible substance. Any structure that has this as its foundation is going to fail ... likley sooner rather than later. Peter Burgess Transcript 0:00 one of the great things about green signals is we get to do and see some absolutely amazing stuff But I think today could be the coolest thing of all I've come to UK rail leasing stepper here in Leicester and in one of the gray sheds behind me is GB Rail Freys brand new class 99 locomotive This is a real gamecher Able to produce 8,000 horsepower when operating in electric mode and 2,400 horsepower from the V16 Cummins engine when in diesel mode The class 99 is the most powerful standalone locomotive built so far for Britain's railway But before we look into the detail of the class 99 and get a tour around the locomotive and the cab it's worth taking a very short trip down memory lane Because to understand how we got to this point we need to recall the once proud British industry that not only built locomotives for our own use but exported them around the world In 200 years we've come a long way in 1:01 terms of the development of the train There have been moments when technological innovations meant we've jumped forward in a massive leap rather than small steps Britain has often led the world Stevenson's rocket was one such moment Sir Nigel Gresley's A4 Pacifics were another One of them number 4468 Malard still holds the world steam locomotive speed record set in 1938 the English electric Deltic the Intercity 125 highspeed train all big leaps forward Freight locomotives not so much The Class 66 imported from US company EMD may be a common sight on Britain's railways and they have proved a really smart purchase But first introduced in 1998 not only are they advancing in years changes to emissions regulations forced EMD to cease production some time ago No more 66s 2:03 In the rush to decarbonize lumbering great diesels are no longer fashionable anyway And whilst everyone knows an electric railway is a better railway the failure of successive governments to commit to a long-term steady program of putting wires up The green bars show the UK electrification volumes And you can see the drought that Sir Andrew referred to The red line reflects German levels of electrification over a similar 30-year period What is currently fashionable are batteries And although the rate of development is impressive there are still concerns over cost range complexity and disposal So GB Rail freight a company known for being a serious and successful disruptor has chosen a different path And wow what a result Bob Tiller is a career railway and celebrates 50 years service in 2026 He has literally seen it all As the former engineering director of GB Rail 3:00 freight he has been the driving force behind these astonishing locomotives I asked Bob what inspired GB Rail freight to opt for the class 99 We were looking we knew that we had growth We knew wanted to grow the business Uh we knew that there wasn't going to be any 60s to buy anymore We had to go somewhere else And we also had an eye to the future We knew decarbonization was coming So when I first saw a Euro I walked through it understood the concept uh met one of the engineers in the cab and I thought we could do with some of these in the UK had a chat with him went to a bar had a beer had another chat with him flew to uh Staddle in Valencia uh had a talk about the concept of bringing one to the UK how we could do it Unfortunately COVID got in the way Yeah as it did for everything But eventually we signed the manufacturing supply agreement in 2023 and here we are with uh 30 class 99s And why i asked Bob did the option of batteries not appeal 4:02 if you produced something with a battery in it I don't want to talk about our competitors but if you had a try mode for example which was very complicated which had a set of batteries in it which is a boost to an engine which only lasts 10 minutes which you can only charge under the wire which you can only do so much with your operations become uh risky So the battery only lasts 10 minutes Yeah 10 minutes And you've got to have something which is simple The raw numbers on the Class 99 are breathtaking This is a locomotive that has 8,000 horsepower on tap when operating in electric mode It has 2,400 horsepower when in diesel mode And although that's a lower headline figure than a class 66 Bob explained why with this locomotive it doesn't matter 75 mph is that is that it are you restricted to that or No it goes it can go up to 100 miles an hour It can go up to 100 miles an hour H how did you have what do you 5:01 have to change to do that so all we have to do is change the dampers on the bogeies and a software change That's it Software change That's it Done A software change And what's interesting about this it's a Coco Yeah Configuration I've seen another Stadler loco that's also relatively new and quite complex That's a Bobo Why why go for this particular configuration laws of physics Okay What you need is something called tractive effort TE All right and that's all about the grip between the rail head and the wheel That's what gets you away on a train It's the grip It's the power How you put the power from this locomotive through that wheel onto the rail head That's called tractive effort When you have a Coco against a Bobo Coco is longer It has more weight defined on its bogeies across a larger scale you're allowed to put that TE over a greater number of wheels onto a greater area of 6:01 track So 66 is 3,250 horsepower The difference is the attractive F is that that traction control package Bob explains how the technology available today for a class 99 compares to that used by a stalwart of British Rails heavy hall freight locomotive fleet of the 80s and '9s The class 56 Class 56 for example when you pull away they suffer from wheel lift So they'll they'll do this They actually will lift on the bogey and the weight will come off the wheel and the wheel will spin So you're not getting that full attractive effort onto that wheel and it was never controlled So the loco would just wheel spin wheel spin shut off open up shut off open up and away you go Things got better 66 is a lot better but it's not individually controlled You've got a Doppler radar on the front but it's not individually controlled on each individual axle to the extent that this is So this one when you pull away every single one of those wheels is connected 7:01 to each other through the computer Looking at the Class 99 it's hard not to get the impression that this is a seriously complex bit of kit with the ability to run electric and switch to diesel and back on the move plus all that fancy power electronics to maximize tractive effort Not so says Bob The vision of the class 99 was to keep it as simple and as tried and tested as possible and it's worked I took something from Germany Eurojul Yeah Right Turned it into a UK example Taking all that risk away because we knew it already worked So the only major difference between a Eurogel and this is the engine Different engine Otherwise if you went into a HVLE or or a HHPI Eurojel it'd look like this Okay Very very similar I mean obviously this is you know got Brit uh UK standard stuff on it Sure And it's a UK loading gauing gauge everything else but 8:01 essentially it's the same bogeies It's the same traction motors same wheel set same transformer same converters Let's just say someone from America would have come along with a completely new design Yeah with all the risks that entails Yeah And they would probably want an order for 150 units There are innovations on this locomotive however particularly when it comes to what we used to in the UK Some are small but no less brilliant A lot of people have mentioned the um your your your sand box I mean nice to know how much sand you've got in there isn't it well I look at that and I go I can't believe we didn't think to do that before Was that your idea uh no Stadler's idea It's Stadler's idea Okay that's very generous of you And then there's the coupling camera complete with its own windscreen wiper Windscreen washer fluid easily accessible and you need that because you've got obviously your big wiper with the with cleaning We've also got your uh coupling 9:01 camera as well And that's got a washer and a wiper which has its own washer Washer and wiper system Diesel of course is unfashionable in 2025 It's not considered at all cool to burn hydrocarbons So to ensure Miss Thunberg doesn't get upset class 99 has a party trick and it's called HVO hydrotreated vegetable oil This um this fuel tank which holds 3,000 L is full of HVO We can run it on diesel if you want to and being stage five emissions it's s you know super clean But HVO it's even cleaner Yeah this saves about 58% carbon reduction One of the challenges is that GB Rail freight operate a substantial fleet of class 66 locomotives and will be doing so for years to come No problem according to Bob We've thought of that And the other one the bigger one is the A which is the American Railroad one which connects to a 66 a 67 a 739 or 10:03 anything else with an A coupling So this can run in multiple with a 66 Yes is you can drive it from the 66 You can drive it from the 66 or this I mean that's going to give you so much operational flexibility isn't it that's the idea One aspect of the class 66 that has attracted criticism over the years certainly the early years is the cab It can be noisy and drafty and hot And having been in a fair few over the last 20 years I can confirm this is the case So time to have a good look around the place the drivers of these remarkable locomotives will call their office the cab It's fantastic I can't get over how much you can see I I I did think I did wonder when I was stood outside that that these pillars might be a bit obtrusive but but they're not at all No not at all You know and even when you've got that if you're driving a 66 or or an earlier type of locomotive where you almost in the winds you know you can look down you just want 11:00 to look down just look in your screen your cameras And if it's dirty put the windshield on I promise it will clean the camera Everything I find that it's absolutely superb I love that I'm guessing that it is It's a cup holder It's a cup holder One on each side One on each side Yeah So you can have your your latte and you can have your flat white You have your flat white That's fantastic And it does work cuz I've tried it out It does fit doesn't it brilliant Yeah Three three pin socket if you got anything that three pin Yeah Um engine start stock controls are over here Yeah Um pan up pan down horn emergency brake Yeah Uh your throttle and your brake regenerative brake here Your straight train brake if you if you need it Cuz obviously most of the time you'd be working regen Yes Uh your locomotive brake Yeah Parking brake Uh speedometer there Uh some nice little clips for holding on your your I wondered what they were I thought is that a fancy rest for a screen and it's not It's just very clever clip It's brilliant Yeah um your TCMS screen Yeah 12:01 Uh which you can it gives you loads of information on your um and is where you can have your cameras and your cameras and everything else And funnily enough I can look at this on my laptop Uh what remotely or just Wow You can so using uh HLA's EVA cloud iCloud All right So dial into this This sends signals Yeah at predetermined points goes out into the cloud and I go to my laptop and I look at my page and I can see what the engine's doing I can see what the traction motors are doing I can see what the driver is doing I can see what that's doing I can check my temperatures of my engine I can check my levels I mean it's basically F1 telemetry isn't it i'm not necessarily going to go that far I mean being a big Williams fan you know I'm not going to It's um I would say that uh it's in terms of Yes In terms of railway Yeah Yes Yeah There's just some lovely touches here because this this 13:01 must be a Swiss thing The horns here there's a little treble cleft for the upper tone Yeah And a bass cleft for the lower tone I mean how that's just so wonderfully musical I love that It's superb You need to keep your staff You need to keep them engaged This is their office Yeah You know same as we go to work in office this is their office So why not give them an office that actually they're pleased to go to work in and you can do just little touches So where's the light switch for the cab i don't know Hopefully So you would think it would be here wouldn't you it's somewhere where it's easy for the driver to get to A little button there But that's great So they're coming in through the door No even before they've come in the drive there's one of these down there by the steps Oh that's brilliant So even before they come to loca they just tap that Yeah All the lights come on Everything comes on They come in here They can put the cab lights on and they go and enter All the lights are on Everything Fantastic No switch no nothing They just touch it Really cool I'd come to Leicester assuming this locomotive was going to be primarily for 14:00 the intermodal or container market But listening to Bob explain what this locomotive can do has made me rethink that Bob again Undoubtedly it lends itself to intermodal Yeah because you've got the roots where there's more electrical pentagramraph supply Um and where you probably wouldn't see it for example is in Port in uh Portsmouth Chicha uh or Hastings You would never go there because there's no pentagramraph The southern third rail is not built for that area Felix Stohams Hall Manchester Trafford Park London Gateway Doncaster Those will undoubtedly be the roots um down the east the Greater Anglia main line North London line Wilsden Actton Great Western main line West Coast East Coast but anywhere east and west even So if you were going across the penines if 15:00 you were going uh middle and main line if you were aggregates if you were cement if you were stone if you were steel if you were a nice dining train does everyone 113 tons axle weight 18.3 tons car 66 626 tons lighter and traction motors racer wheel sets less damage to the rail head Bob has worked on these locomotives from the very beginning to get to this point We talked about the journey he's been on I had a boss John in John Smith who believed in the product and believed what I said and back to me and he's been tremendous for the business and tremendous for UK freight So firstly I'd say thank you to John because without him we wouldn't have done it but also for me to get this here is a tremendous achievement and I am very very proud and I'm proud of my colleagues who have 16:08 helped me people in Beacon but also in Jim Ray and Stadler have been fantastic I've never had such a good working relationship with a builder or manufacturer than I have with Stadler They're fantastic and the quality of the build speaks for itself It is absolutely superb Summing up a locomotive like the Class 99 is hard because there's nothing quite like it It's completely countercultural Whilst the rest of the rail industry seems to be hellbent on an immersive love affair with the battery and all the complexity that brings GB Rail freight have gone 'Nah we're going to do something different.' The Class 99 is properly anti-establishment It's a disruptor The personality of the company's CEO John Smith shines through But John Smith doesn't do things for effect He does them for a purpose Usually a very successful commercial one And you can be sure that running a profitable business 17:00 is first and foremost in everyone's mind at GB Rail freight with this locomotive I have a tinge of sadness though as I look around this wonderful locomotive All those iconic locomotives of the past were built here in Britain The A4 conceived in Britain and built in Britain Same for the Deltic Same for the high-speed train All British designed all British built but the factories in which they were built really no more now than a distant memory It's therefore a shame that to get hold of something as amazing as the class 99 GB Rail freight had to go to a Swiss company and buy a locomotive that they've built in Spain Don't get me wrong Stadler are a worldclass company and this is a worldclass product They should feel immensely proud of what they've built here It's wonderful But I can't help feeling sad that in the country that gave railways to the world and whose workshops once exported locomotives across the world in 2025 when we 18:00 celebrate 200 years of the railway We couldn't get even close to building anything like this Now still a British company has had the vision to buy this and it's here So well done to GB Rail freight to Beacon Rail for financing it to Stadler for building it Thank heavens for all of them And as for the class 99 itself I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that not only is this a massive leap forward as a locomotive it may just be the thing that saves rail freight in this country If there's ever a top trumps for railway locomotives everyone is going to want the GB Rail freight class 99 cuz one thing's for certain nothing has a higher cool rating [Music] Hey Hey Hey [Music]

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