Brush Classes 89, 60, 9 (Eurotunnel) & 92: More info on these and the end of loco building in the UK

Hi,

I am new here. I am looking into the UK's loss if loco building capacity as part of a wider academic study of how manufacturing has changed over the last 30 years.

As Brush built the last locomotives I am looking at them first. In particular how the Class 89 may have shared components with the Class 60, Eurounnel Type 9 and the Class 92s, as well as the New Zealand ER locos.

Brush seem to have used similar bogies, electronics etc. across several locos. I wondered how great this similarity really was, and why they went with ABB later on?

I am essentially ignorant so hoping to learn more. The choice of Brush has also involved looking into BREL and GEC around the same time. It does seem the decision to not use the Class 89 widely on ECML was a turning point, but perhaps one that made Brush look to new markets where others sought traditional BR contracts.

Any help in understanding the basic story is appreciated.

Where to start?

Firstly, do you really mean ‘loco building’ or do you mean rolling stock building in general?

Specifically referring to locomotives, one of the big global changes was the move from loco-hauled to multiple units for passenger trains. By definition this reduced the size of the market considerably aided and abetted by static or declining passenger numbers in the 1970s and 80s. Passenger locomotives, either electric or diesel, were only built in penny numbers after the last of the HSTs in the late 1970s. The market had effectively disappeared.

Powerful freight-only locomotives were a result of the rise of heavy ‘unit trains’ from the late 1960s running from siding to siding with no intermediate marshalling. The first of these locomotives can be considered to be the Class 56 dating from the mid-1970s. When the railways were privatised most freight operations were bought by Wisconsin Central of the US whose CEO was not impressed by the variety of locomotives in the fleet and their generally poor reliability and availability. So he ordered 250 identical locomotives (Class 66) from the US/Canadian Electro-Motive which were based on the experience gained in supplying thousands of locomotives to the US railroads.

To understand more of the background I suggest looking through back numbers of the Railway Gazette and Modern Railways magazines. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology will certainly have some papers on the subject.

One last thing. The Clayton Equipment Company, its website is here, still builds locomotives!

Good luck!

Thanks. I am looking at loco builders (glad to see one survives) but of course need to place this in the wider market change to MUs.

Some of my thinking may be coloured by a holiday in central Europe where there seems to be a lot more traditional locomotive power used than in the UK. I do wonder if the post 1982 sectorisation led to the UK focus on MUs, rather than the more flexible locos that, for example, Austria seem to favour more.

The 'Taurus' family seem to echo the Class 89.

One thing that I realised last night was that ABB may really have been BREL after the buyout, so Class 9 and 92 were less European than I thought?

In short:-

British Rail Engineering Limited(BR Workshops) which had been separated from British Rail was sold off to ASEA Brown Boveri which later merged with Daimler Benz Transportation to form AdTranz. This was taken over by Bombardier and AdTranz products which were developments of the networker (which ABB built) were built as the Electrostar and Turbostar. York works has long closed - sold to Thrall Europa - as has many of the engineering and maintenance sites (closed - Swindon, Shildon, sold on -Ashford, Eastleigh, Crewe) but production remains at Derby.

English Electric which owned Vulcan Foundry and Robert Stephenson & Hawthorn was taken over by and absorbed into The General Electric Company which later merged with Alsthom to form GEC Alsthom. The group included Ruston Engines (which developed the EE SVT line of engines (08, 37, 50 etc) into the RK series in the 56 and 58, and Paxman Diesels as used in the HST. The GEC bit was later dropped from the name. The EE507 traction motor is still built in Preston although very few products still use this motor and production is winding down. I do believe Preston is also winding down as in favour of new premises in Wigan/Widnes area

Falcon Engine and car was taken over by Brush Electric Light creating Brush electrical engineering. The Brush group was then bought by Hawker Siddley, creating Brush Traction. The class 47 being the most recognised product of Brush. following a couple of other takeovers it is now part of WabTec and still based in the Falcon Works at Loughborough.

A quick Google will reveal some much more fascinating history and detail than what I have put here

coppercapped said:

Where to start?

Firstly, do you really mean ‘loco building’ or do you mean rolling stock building in general?

Specifically referring to locomotives, one of the big global changes was the move from loco-hauled to multiple units for passenger trains. By definition this reduced the size of the market considerably aided and abetted by static or declining passenger numbers in the 1970s and 80s. Passenger locomotives, either electric or diesel, were only built in penny numbers after the last of the HSTs in the late 1970s. The market had effectively disappeared.

Powerful freight-only locomotives were a result of the rise of heavy ‘unit trains’ from the late 1960s running from siding to siding with no intermediate marshalling. The first of these locomotives can be considered to be the Class 56 dating from the mid-1970s. When the railways were privatised most freight operations were bought by Wisconsin Central of the US whose CEO was not impressed by the variety of locomotives in the fleet and their generally poor reliability and availability. So he ordered 250 identical locomotives (Class 66) from the US/Canadian Electro-Motive which were based on the experience gained in supplying thousands of locomotives to the US railroads.

To understand more of the background I suggest looking through back numbers of the Railway Gazette and Modern Railways magazines. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology will certainly have some papers on the subject.

One last thing. The Clayton Equipment Company, its website is here, still builds locomotives!

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Brush can also still build locos (not my photo): https://www.flickr.com/photos/justinfoulger/33532797020

Wasn't Tornado also built in the UK?

Yes, 60163 Tornado was built in the UK, although the boiler was made in Germany.

Loughborough said:

Thanks. I am looking at loco builders (glad to see one survives) but of course need to place this in the wider market change to MUs.

Some of my thinking may be coloured by a holiday in central Europe where there seems to be a lot more traditional locomotive power used than in the UK. I do wonder if the post 1982 sectorisation led to the UK focus on MUs, rather than the more flexible locos that, for example, Austria seem to favour more.

The 'Taurus' family seem to echo the Class 89.

One thing that I realised last night was that ABB may really have been BREL after the buyout, so Class 9 and 92 were less European than I thought?

Click to expand...

In his post above, gimmea50anyday has given an accurate summary of the changes in the supply industry since the days of BREL. To extend what he wrote slightly, of all the manufacturers of locomotives only English Electric could build the prime mover, the electric transmissions and the bodies. All the others had to buy all or part of the power train from other suppliers, for example the Sulzer engines for Brush's Class 47 were built by Vickers to a Swiss design and the Derby and Swindon built locomotives all used diesel engines and transmissions which were bought in. Being a pure electric locomotive Brush could build all of (most of!) the Class 89.

Austria, and Switzerland but now to a lesser extent, are outliers in the locomotive stakes. Certainly in the countries I am most familiar with (France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) over the last couple of decades multiple unit operation of passenger services has become standard. There are still some loco hauled services but only where newer trains have not yet taken over.

In the UK the change to multiple unit operation started long before sectorisation. BR built some 3,000 first generation diesel multiple units and some of these were intended for 'Inter City' and 'Cross Country' services. Being BR's first attempt at diesel train building some were more successful than others and didn't last very long - although some of the short life was due to the need to remove all rolling stock which had used asbestos for insulation purposes from service.

'Flexibility' comes at a cost - and that is superfluous weight and train length for passenger operations. Obviously locomotives still survive for freight operations.

Class 91 (1988-91) was a GEC design, with construction subcontracted to BREL.
Class 90 (1987-90) was a BREL design, with GEC traction equipment.
GEC became GEC Alsthom in 1989, and Alstom in 1998 when GEC sold its 50% share to Alstom.
There are TGV-type trains in Europe still carrying a GEC Alsthom manufacturer's plate, though they had minimal UK content.
GEC traction technology (from what used to be EE Preston) found its way into Eurostar and the Virgin Pendolino, but otherwise has been dropped by Alstom.

The successor to BREL/ABB/ADtranz (Bombardier) now offers UK trains with major components from continental sources (traction motors, bogies etc).
Trains built for the UK market in Derby, Newton Aycliffe, Newport and elsewhere will contain only a small proportion of UK equipment.
Ironically, the diesel power packs for Hitachi's 80x series come from Rolls Royce - German MTU is owned by RR.

Much like the car industry, with modern supply chains it's not really meaningful to talk about national rail products any more.
eg Hitachi can and do "build" the same train for the UK in Japan or Italy, as well as in the UK (from largely Japanese components).
Merseyrail's new trains are "Swiss" from Stadler, but the bodyshells will be constructed in Hungary (or Poland).
CAF's new trains for the UK are built in Spain, but the traction equipment is Austrian.
That's all down to globalisation and the EU single market.

It is really now a global market and the UK is but a very small part of it. North America is a much larger market for diesel locos and it is therefore unsurprising that other countries buy from the North American builders (predominantly GE and EMD) - it makes sense in terms of spares availability, reliability and buying a tried-and-tested product. So the likes of Australia and China will often buy from the North American market and the UK likewise - the Class 66 uses widely available EMD parts (engine/alternator/traction motors etc) in a UK shell. Likewise the North American market for electric locos is smaller, so the trend has been towards buying from European manufacturers, again with a proven product (New Jersey Transit buying TRAXX derivatives from Bombardier in Germany, and Amtrak's ACS-64 is essentially a North American version of Siemens' Vectron).

There are obviously some exceptions to this: for example, North American passenger diesels have become more "European" over the last 20 years or so - the GE "Genesis" was heavily influenced by Krupp (bogies and bodyshell) albeit with GE 'Dash 9' era internal equipment, and the Siemens "Charger" locos have now pretty much become the new standard design.

Going back to the original point about Brush, the Class 89 bogie design was carried forward to the Class 60 and 92 designs. The Eurotunnel locos needed a Bo-Bo-Bo arrangement to help cope with sharp curves in the shuttle terminals. The Eurotunnel and Class 92 types had ABB power equipment chosen partly to try to reduce risk: it was sourced from ABB in Switzerland who had provided similar equipment for the SBB Re460 and BLS Re465 types, the specification for which included use through the long Gotthard and Lötschberg alpine tunnels. It was felt that using equipment already specified for operating in long tunnels would be advantageous.

Loughborough said:

As Brush built the last locomotives I am looking at them first. In particular how the Class 89 may have shared components with the Class 60, Eurounnel Type 9 and the Class 92s, as well as the New Zealand ER locos.

Brush seem to have used similar bogies, electronics etc. across several locos. I wondered how great this similarity really was, and why they went with ABB later on?

Click to expand...

Note that the 89 was (electrically) a DC-motored, Thyristor (SCR) controlled AC-electric loco. The class 92 and Eurotunnel class 9 locos use AC-motors, driven from high-power 3-phase inverter traction control equipment from ABB (who were one of the pioneers of that technology). This is doubtless partly why both of those loco projects were Brush/ABB joint ventures (as well as spreading the financial risk).

Mechanically I've always assumed there is reasonable amount of synergy between the 89/60/92. You only have to look at other loco manufacturers products over the years to realise that good mechanical designs tend to last through several generations of power equipment designs (bogies in particular). Heck, EMD in the USA used versions of its two-axle 'Blomberg' bogie under many different loco models from the late 1930's until the mid 1990's - over 50 years!

As for the Bo-Bo-Bo design of the class 9 - yes, my understanding is that Brush based the mechanical design of it on the NZ 'EF' Bo-Bo-Bo locos. But don't forget that ABB (as Brown-Boveri back then) was also involved in the Swiss Re 620 Bo-Bo-Bo loco project back in the 1970's.

As an aside GM wanted to use the Class 89 bogies under the Class 67 locomotives because a UK 125 mph Co-Co design wasn't readily available. In the end agreement on licensing the design couldn't be reached hence why the Class 67s are a Bo-Bo design.

A number of factors you need to look at
First the 1960s Beeching and subsequent cuts meant that too many modernisation plan DMUs and locomotives were built. This resulted in a hiatus in building DMUs from around 1958 until the 1980s, while there was a diesel locomotive production gap from the mid 60s (class 37, 50) until the emergency build of the class 56 fleet roughly ten years later.
Many of the modernisation plan builders had been incompetent anyway, failing to invest in modern tooling and producing substandard products. Its significant that the only three private builders who made successful products: EE, Brush, Birmingham RC&W had all had successful pre-WW2 export business. Even of those three, BRC&W recognised they hadn't the critical mass to survive and withdrew from the railway market in the early 1960s, leaving just EE, Brush and the BR workshops. All the others went bust.
In the 1970s the oil crisis required an urgent build of coal haulers, so the class 56 fleet appeared, but during the preceeding ten years the loco companies had mothballed their works and run down their design and research teams so the 56 reused much of the class 47 design with a new engine grafted in. Even the new EE engine actually owed more to Swiss Sulzer research than British. The end result was a Brush designed body, with a mongrel engine built by EE, assembled in Romania (for the first batch) or a BR workshop (for the later ones) - neither EE or Brush had any erection capacity left.
The class 58 & 60 followed, Brush made half hearted attempts to restart loco production but got little interest. Both EE and Brush relied mainly on selling electrical components for others to use.
But the big killer was the three year hiatus in placing rolling stock orders following the Tory decision to privatise the railways. That led to empty production lines at the EMU assembly sheds, so no parts orders. GEC sold what remained of its rail business off to the French, Brush concentrated on refurbs (e.g...... the class 57), the BR workshops were sold..........and everything was run down, asset stripped or closed.
When the privatised railway started looking for new stock there was no-one left in the UK to provide.........

Just as a slight aside, someone earlier said that EE were the only company that were fully integrated in being able to build all parts of the loco. Not strictly true..........Brush licensed the rights to the Maybach designs, but their owners Hawker-Siddeley decided that Bristol-Siddeley was a better home for them and even built a new factory for diesel production.
After Falcon, the first twenty class 47 were built at Brush through a historical accident and production continued with Sulzers. Brush/Bristol between them could have built everything (especially given that they later added Crompton-Parkinson to the Hawker group) but never actually did.

Being in the EU has caused us to lose a lot of decent jobs then.

LNW-GW Joint said:

Class 91 (1988-91) was a GEC design, with construction subcontracted to BREL.
Class 90 (1987-90) was a BREL design, with GEC traction equipment.
GEC became GEC Alsthom in 1989, and Alstom in 1998 when GEC sold its 50% share to Alstom.
There are TGV-type trains in Europe still carrying a GEC Alsthom manufacturer's plate, though they had minimal UK content.
GEC traction technology (from what used to be EE Preston) found its way into Eurostar and the Virgin Pendolino, but otherwise has been dropped by Alstom.

The successor to BREL/ABB/ADtranz (Bombardier) now offers UK trains with major components from continental sources (traction motors, bogies etc).
Trains built for the UK market in Derby, Newton Aycliffe, Newport and elsewhere will contain only a small proportion of UK equipment.
Ironically, the diesel power packs for Hitachi's 80x series come from Rolls Royce - German MTU is owned by RR.

Much like the car industry, with modern supply chains it's not really meaningful to talk about national rail products any more.
eg Hitachi can and do "build" the same train for the UK in Japan or Italy, as well as in the UK (from largely Japanese components).
Merseyrail's new trains are "Swiss" from Stadler, but the bodyshells will be constructed in Hungary (or Poland).
CAF's new trains for the UK are built in Spain, but the traction equipment is Austrian.
That's all down to globalisation and the EU single market.

Click to expand...

That's because the UK market (especially for locos) is too small to support a sustainable integrated rail manufacturing business.
The present EU majors deliver all over the EU (and beyond), and the US majors also have a huge domestic market.
One of those is Bombardier, but for all sorts of reasons their Derby plant doesn't get to build much for export.
It's also worth noting that even the big multi-nationals are struggling, with repeated attempts at mergers/rationalisation (eg Siemens/Alstom).
Italy's main train builder (Ansaldo Breda) is now in Japanese hands (Hitachi).

Terry Tait said:

Being in the EU has caused us to lose a lot of decent jobs then.

Click to expand...

Not really............the bigger problem was allowing Lord Weinstock to purchase and then asset strip through his GEC empire so much of the British engineering and electrical industries. He supervised the export of jobs of much of our rail, electronic, electrical and military businesses. Being in the EU made it easier, but it would have happened anyway

randyrippley said:

Not really............the bigger problem was allowing Lord Weinstock to purchase and then asset strip through his GEC empire so much of the British engineering and electrical industries. He supervised the export of jobs of much of our rail, electronic, electrical and military businesses. Being in the EU made it easier, but it would have happened anyway

Click to expand...

Why did he do that?

While I don't know the situation, I'm 100% sure that it would come down to making profit in the short term.

LNW-GW Joint said:

That's because the UK market (especially for locos) is too small to support a sustainable integrated rail manufacturing business.
The present EU majors deliver all over the EU (and beyond), and the US majors also have a huge domestic market.
One of those is Bombardier, but for all sorts of reasons their Derby plant doesn't get to build much for export.
It's also worth noting that even the big multi-nationals are struggling, with repeated attempts at mergers/rationalisation (eg Siemens/Alstom).
Italy's main train builder (Ansaldo Breda) is now in Japanese hands (Hitachi).

Click to expand...

Ansaldo Breda had been buying in Bombardier electronics (e.g. TMS systems) for years to try to stay in the train building market as they hadn't done their own R&D. Lots of small firms doing R&D in parallel isn't good for end user purchasing costs.

A lot of the 89 bodywork owes its design to the HST Power Car - in part a brush product itself I do believe...

Bornin1980s said:

Why did he do that?

Click to expand...

There was more money to be made from asset stripping than there was from running the businesses as ongoing concerns.
You could argue that none of the companies he took over had critical mass to survive alone, but his whole methodology was to buy UK companies, strip them of assets and sell the goodwill and technology rights overseas, often into joint ventures which he later withdrew from.

gimmea50anyday said:

A lot of the 89 bodywork owes its design to the HST Power Car - in part a brush product itself I do believe...

Click to expand...

The bodywork of the power cars is nothing to do with Brush (essentially they are a BR/BREL design), though, so that link is tenuous at best.

Brush involvement on HST power cars was limited to component supply of electrical equipment (alternators, traction motors etc).

Ah, explains a lot. I did say in part tho, maybe a smaller part than I thought tho

The bodywork however does bear striking similarities between the two, especially the front end

randyrippley said:

There was more money to be made from asset stripping than there was from running the businesses as ongoing concerns.
You could argue that none of the companies he took over had critical mass to survive alone, but his whole methodology was to buy UK companies, strip them of assets and sell the goodwill and technology rights overseas, often into joint ventures which he later withdrew from.

Click to expand...

I think you have your CEOs of GEC mixed up. Lord Weinstock grew GEC into the Top 5 of UK companies. It was his successor George Simpson who started selling things off and eventually completely f'ed it up spending the proceeds on second rate tech companies at the height of the dotcom boom.

tomuk said:

I think you have your CEOs of GEC mixed up. Lord Weinstock grew GEC into the Top 5 of UK companies. It was his successor George Simpson who started selling things off and eventually completely f'ed it up spending the proceeds on second rate tech companies at the height of the dotcom boom.

Click to expand...

Simpson completed the job by disposing of just about everything that wasn't telecoms related - and then getting burnt when BT refused to purchase their products, but Weinstock was the architect of the problem. His asset stripping certainly made profits for the corporate group, but most of those profits came from disposals, not trade

If you want an overview of Weinstock, read this
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/07/wein-j27.html
OK its written from a Socialist perspective, but its damned accurate

randyrippley said:

Simpson completed the job by disposing of just about everything that wasn't telecoms related - and then getting burnt when BT refused to purchase their products, but Weinstock was the architect of the problem. His asset stripping certainly made profits for the corporate group, but most of those profits came from disposals, not trade

If you want an overview of Weinstock, read this
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/07/wein-j27.html
OK its written from a Socialist perspective, but its damned accurate

Click to expand...

I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the term "asset stripping". Generally it refers to buying up a company and then selling off the component parts to realise profits (sum of the parts is greater than the whole). From what I've seen that's not Weinstock did - he was more of a ruthless cost cutter after buying up companies to create almost monopoly positions. Arguably, that was what was required in the 1960s and 1970s to make British industry survive, but by the 1980s/90s it had run its course.

gimmea50anyday said:

Ah, explains a lot. I did say in part tho, maybe a smaller part than I thought tho

The bodywork however does bear striking similarities between the two, especially the front end

Click to expand...

I think that's because both are based on the Mk3 coach.

43096 said:

I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the term "asset stripping". Generally it refers to buying up a company and then selling off the component parts to realise profits (sum of the parts is greater than the whole). From what I've seen that's not Weinstock did - he was more of a ruthless cost cutter after buying up companies to create almost monopoly positions. Arguably, that was what was required in the 1960s and 1970s to make British industry survive, but by the 1980s/90s it had run its course.

Click to expand...

I don't know what you call it, but to me, hostile company takeovers resulting in the rapid closure of over 140 manufacturing sites can only be regarded as asset stripping, especially given that the remaining businesses were shotgunned into foreign controlled joint ventures.
Those 140 sites were closed, the plant scrapped, sites sold for redevelopment and the staff sacked. I call that asset stripping. The cash all went to swell GEC's warchest coffers allowing them to take over and strip more businesses. Virtually no cash was invested in research and development - that was too long term.

randyrippley said:

I don't know what you call it, but to me, hostile company takeovers resulting in the rapid closure of over 140 manufacturing sites can only be regarded as asset stripping, especially given that the remaining businesses were shotgunned into foreign controlled joint ventures.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure shotgunned is accurate he bought AEI in 1967, English Electric in 1968 and formed the Alsthom JV in 1988. That's 20 years of ownership.