They were certainly up there when they were fairly new.
They don’t class as locomotives though.
Not the best at the moment unfortunately.
I remember when I worked at toton what kept them going was the fact they worked in pairs. Was very common to have bits not working on one loco
Details, details. In all seriousness...oops...
Indeed. But the 66 is used for pretty much all freight operations in the UK yet it doesn't seem to break down much. I have never heard of a failed 66.
37800 knows what happens to trains that are not needed any more, and doesn't want to end up towed to Newport Docks.
I look at electrics becuase there is less to go wrong, plus easier to maintain when they do go wrong, and I include that as part of reliability. If a loco breaks just once beput you can't repair it, can it really be called reliable?
True, in part at least. Fitting Flexicoil suspension to the 86/2s and limiting the remainder to 80mph was a partial cure, but the WCML track benefitted greatly from their eventual replacement by more modern traction. The three 86/1s were always my favourites.
what do the 37s achieve now?
At Toton some of the pits I worked to and from, if one of the 20's went "Pop" the other one wasn't nearly enough to keep the train going so you were still a dead duck. Leaving Calverton and Silverhill, and getting to the loader at Bentinck immediately spring to mind. Always found 56's and 60's far more reliable, certainly on colliery jobs. Quite often one of the 20's would overload and by the time you'd shut off and retaken power you'd lost all momentum.
I'd generally agree with that, but even EMD has delivered some less-than-stellar locos in North America e.g. the GP35 (complex, unreliable all-DC electrical system and the 567 series engine at the limit), the SD50 (645 series engine pushed too far and build quality issues, resulting in most of them being downgraded over the years to the equivalent of an SD40-2), and SD90MAC (problems with the new 265H engine and build quality issues, resulting in short lives or extensive rebuilding into 710-powered locos).
What exactly was the inherent design flaw with 86s that affected the track quality? The track doesn’t seem to be particularly good on the WCML now compared to some secondary routes but I assumed that was to do with the density of both fast and heavy traffic using it. Anything wrong with it is definitely felt more on a 195 than on a Pendolino.
As built the locos had bogie mounted heavy motors, so there was a lot of unsprung weight, or more precisely partly sprung, and any jolting of the bogies on poor track meant the heavy weight effected a heavy hammer blow on the track.
Oh and don't forget the various Electric Class locomotives too, certainly Class 86 and Class 87 should be high up.
