Railway Herald
Visiting the gala courtesy of Locomotive services, Class 57 No. 57003 is seen resplendent in its Railfreight Distribution livery at Kidderminster on 15th May 2025. The Class 57's were re manufactured from 1960's
built Class 47 locomotives in the late 90's / early 00's, initially for Freightliner who required some more reliable traction than the work worn Class 47's they had. The locomotives were remanufactured by Brush in Loughborough and were fitted with EMD powertrain and the initial batch (57001-12) worked with Freightliner until they had enough of the then ‘new' Class 66's, which they ultimate preferred to the remanufactured 47's.Two other batches of 57's were constructed mainly for Virgin as ‘thunderbirds' and GWR for its sleeper operations. 57003 was originally 47317 ‘Willesden Yard' which operated in Railfreight Distribution livery prior to its conversion. So while the Class 57's were never around at the time of BR railfreight ‘sectors' its new livery is a nod to its previous incarnation where as a 47 it did wear the livery. When it was a Freightliner locomotive it was named ‘Freightliner Evolution'.
57003 is seen here ‘spooling up' in the headshunt at Kidderminster.
David Bissett
