‘45' NOT OUT

Ahead of a new edition of his book about life as a BR trainman in the 1990s, Tim Helme looks back to the remaining Class 45s that could still be found in the Derby area back then.

- Tim Helme

ICONFESS the only time I got to ride in the cab of a Class 45 at Derby was as a young, wide-eyed rail enthusiast rather than as a member of train crew, but several examples of the class were still knocking around when I started at 4 Shed in 1990.

Derby was essentially the spiritual home of the ‘Peaks’, and no driver I spoke to ever had a bad word to say about them. Although restricted to 90mph, they were thrashed to within an inch of their lives up and down the Midland Main Line, but still came back for more.

My first trainman job at Derby in 1990 was acting as secondman on an engineering train, headed by No. 47971 Robin Hood, which had been tasked to assist in the lifting of the Mickleover Test Track accessed from the Up Stoke at Egginton Junction.

At the time, there were half a dozen derelict Class 45s stored in the sidings there (Nos. 45111/125/126/136/146/148), most of which had been drafted in from the scrap lines at March depot to act as dead weight loads during the Class 60 testing conducted between July 1989 and May 1990.

During these tests, the Class 60 had struggled to maintain air pressure throughout the train, so one of the traction inspectors decided to fire up the Class 45s to assist. Even though these locos had been left to rot, most started first time and worked perfectly. For operational reasons, only four of the locos were used as train weight, with No. 45148 remaining in the headshunt at Mickleover during testing.

Someone became a little overzealous and removed the connection between the Up Stoke line and the sidings shortly after the test track had been lifted – so, in typical railway fashion, it had to be temporarily reinstated in March 1992 to extricate the derelict ‘45s’.