Origins
The Class 47 history begins in the early 1960s with the stated aim of the British Transport Commission (BTC) to completely remove steam locomotives from British Rail by a target date of 1968. The railways archive - Retrieved on 2007-06-15 They therefore required a large build of lightweight Type 4 locomotives to achieve this aim. This required locomotives producing at least 2,500 bhp (1,900 kW) but with an axle load of no more than 19 long tons (19 t). However, the BTC were not convinced that the future of diesel traction lay down the hydraulic transmission path of the Western Region, and began looking at various diesel-electric designs.
Despite the construction of two demonstration locomotives (D0260 LION, produced by AEI and BRC&W using a Sulzer engine, and D0280 FALCON, built by Brush Traction using Maybach engines), the need for a large number of locomotives quickly was deemed paramount, and the pilot build of what would become Class 47 began before the prototypes could be comprehensively assessed. This initial build of 20 locomotives (Nos. D1500 to D1519) were mechanically different from the remainder of the type, and would be withdrawn earlier. However, based on these and the success of LION, an order for 270 locomotives was made, which was later revised upwards a number of times to reach the final total of 512. Five locomotives, Nos. D1702 to D1706, were fitted with a Sulzer V12 12LVA24 power unit and classified as Class 48s; the experiment was not deemed a success, and they were later converted to standard 47s.
Read more about this topic: British Rail Class 47
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