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BY any measure, the Class 08 0-6-0 shunter is a contender for the most successful locomotive ever to run in Britain. Taking into account Classes 09, 10, and other variants, a total of 1193 locos were built over a decade from 1952, and some of those are still at work today – more than 70 years after the first, No. 13000, left Derby Works.
The design was essentially an updated version of one developed by the LMS in the 1930s (a later batch of which survived to become British Rail Class 11, while a similar Southern design became Class 12 – but both of these classes are excluded here).
The main run of 996 Class 08s (earlier designated D3/2) featured a 350hp English Electric 6KT engine and two EE 506 traction motors; 26 others were built for the Southern Region with different gearing to increase the maximum speed from 15/20mph to 27.5mph at the expense of lower tractive effort.
These became Class 09 (D3/2), and a further 12 ‘08s’ were converted to ‘09s’ in the 1990s.
A major variation saw 146 built with 350hp Lister Blackstone ER6T engines and two GEC WT821 traction motors, these becoming Class 10 (D3/4), while 15 others (D3/5) had the Lister Blackstone engine and BTH traction motors, and 10 (D3/3) were built with a 350hp Crossley ESNT6 engine and Crompton Parkinson motors. Six ‘08s’ were rebuilt in 1965 as permanently coupled ‘master and slave’ pairs for use in Tinsley Yard, these becoming Class 13 under TOPS.
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