Feature
It’s a warm welcome to 91000, the latest in a line of locomotives that have carried the RAIL name. CHRIS GILSON tells the history of ‘our’ ‘91’, and others that have been associated with this magazine over the years
Class 91 91105 - the East Coast Main Line locomotive that has been renumbered 91000 to mark RAIL’s 1,000th issue - has now run a remarkable eight and a half million miles since it was completed at Crewe in the late 1980s.
Our thanks go to LNER Managing Director David Horne, the staff of LNER, and the team at Leeds Neville Hill Depot for allowing the identity change to take place on December 16. It is the very first locomotive to carry an ‘XX000’ number since the five-digit TOPS system was introduced in the early 1970s.
The life of 91000 will be inevitably short, however, as it is one of the 12 remaining active ‘InterCity’ 225s (out of a fleet of 32) that are earmarked for replacement by new CAF units over the next four or five years (RAIL 997).
Since their introduction in 1988, the Class 91s (also known initially as ‘Electras’) were the flagship mainstay of London-Edinburgh services (and for many years to Glasgow), until the introduction of the Hitachi Class 800 and ‘801’ units in May 2021. During their time, they have worked under seven different operators, and had two owners.
With a distinctive asymmetric design, ‘91s’ still retain the British speed record for an electric train - at 161.7mph, gained by 91010/91110 Battle of Britain Memorial Flight on September 17 1989 over Stoke Bank (south of Grantham).
‘Our’ 91000 was built at Crewe when it was part of British Rail Engineering Limited, and was taken into stock (on paper) on May 27 1988 and allocated to Bounds Green depot in north London. It was noted on the works, however, on July 19, having been used on a variety of test and charter trains on the West Coast Main Line.
Classed as a prototype (along with 91001- 010), it finally moved across to the ECML and continued to work test trains until September 1988, in order to build up its mileage before final acceptance.
The Class 91 idea was conceived in the early 1980s, when it was clear that the Advanced Passenger Train was never going to be accepted into fleet service because of the cost of resolving a large number of reliability issues associated with the high level of technical innovation.
It was decided to take a step back and produce a high-performance electric locomotive capable of 140mph, which could be attached to a rake of conventional Mk 4 coaching stock (intended for tilting, but never used in service) with a push-pull driving trailer at the rear.
Approval to electrify the ECML placed new urgency on the project, and after a brief dalliance with Brush Co-Co prototype 89001, an order was placed for 31 Class 91s capable of generating 6,480hp.
