Off The Rails: British Rail Class 17

D8568 first went to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. The horn had a haunting echo in the Newtondale valley. I remember it in the full 'Ribble Cement' livery & being less than clean. Apparently the works manager at Ribble Cement was aware he had a sole survivor & had no intention of allowing it to go for scrap.

I was invited onto the footplate of D8568 at Grosmont works on the NYMR, on 26th April 1986, the day of the Chernobyl disaster. The engineers there had recently worked out the reason for the unreliability of the Paxman engines, being a lack of oil pressure which they cured temporarily by mounting a huge oil barrel above one bonnet to help boost the pressure of the oil-feed by gravity! Thirty-eight years later, I have again found myself in the spacious cab of D8568, now fully restored and working very nicely on the Great Central Railway. Well done, all who thought it worthwhile to save and restore this oddly- interesting loco.

We had these at Tyne yard, we loved them on local goods, they were a fitters nightmare. Always a comfortable and draught free loco.

I recall the attempt to 'fix' the Class using RollsRoyce engines led to an appearance on BBC Tomorrow's World in the days of Raymond Baxter and James Burke.

An interesting video. I went to school very near the Hemelite works, so I saw this loco quite a few times plodding around. Many years later it was nice to be hauled by her.

Well Done for including Derek, the diesel from Thomas. You avoided the major oversight there. Well done.

Pity the Class 17 was so terrible. You can’t help but feel pity for the failed diesel classes of British Railways.

Are you sure they had train heating boilers? For one summer season in the mid 1960s the 16:10 stopping train from Edinburgh Waverley to Hawick was regularly hauled by a Clayton diesel (not yet designated Class 17) but in the winter the train reverted to steam haulage by B1s. I (a schoolboy at the time) assumed this was due to the absence of a train heating boiler. I also can't see how the fireman/secondman could have attended such to such a boiler with the "bonnet" design. The need for the secondman to attend to the boiler was the reason why loco-hauled passenger trains had to be double-manned when I worked on the railway in the 1970s. Due to their short working life, I was only once on the footplate of a Class 17, when I had to pass on a message to a Millerhill driver in Cadder Yard. (The engine was about to work a train back to Millerhill.) I was struck then by the cab seats facing in opposite directions. I was told that this was because this was because the locomotives were designed for single manning. Presumably, with such good all-round visibility, it was felt there was no need for a secondman when working a train. By that way of thinking, a secondman would only be necessary when running light on the main line between the engine sheds and the yard where the train started/finished. Presumably the management thought it didn't matter in these circumstances that the secondman (who would often be a guard acting as secondman) was facing in the wrong direction! Personally I think they should have had two seats facing in each direction; there was certainly room for four seats in that large cab. But management were always looking for ways to save money, and in the 1960s they were trying to force single-manning on a workforce that didn't want it. It would certainly be easier for the driver to change driving positions than in a double-cabbed locomotive, but it wouldn't be possible when the locomotive was moving. If you've ever gone through the engine room of a Class 47 when it was working a train, you'll know what I mean. Or indeed any diesel when it was working hard uphill! Unlike a lot of people, I was sorry to see these quite distinctive locomotives go. I felt that the good visibility made them ideally suited for the sort of local freight trains where more time was spent shunting, than actually hauling trains on the main line. From about 1972 I was working as a goods guard, working many such trains, mainly with double-cabbed locomotives of classes 27, 26, 24 and 25 (and sometimes an English Electric Class 20). I sometimes thought it would have been easier for the driver and I too see each other had we had a Class 17. I think the real reason for their rapid withdrawal was the enormous loss of freight traffic in the late '60s / early '70s, when the freight management simply threw in the towel in the face of competition from road hauliers. Had BR been committed to retaining this traffic, then solutions to the operating problems of the Claytons could surely have been found. But, with the traffic they had been built to work largely lost, it was cheaper just to scrap them. It was depressing working of the freight side of the railways in the 1970s. Most of the depots I worked trains to and from are now closed. By restricting itself to block trainload traffic, the railway tied itself to heavy industry, failing to foresee how quickly heavy industry itself would decline. I personally think the biggest loss was the premature closure of the modern computerised hump marshalling yards built in the 1960s. I think they could and should have provided the backbone of British freight transport well into the 21st century.

I remember them well. They ran on a line in the north of Edinburgh, which was at the back of my house. My neighbour drove them. He referred to them as "900 Claytons". I wonder if that was a reference to brake horse power ?. Happy days.

Small centre-cab classes are almost ubiquitous among the railways of the world. However there were certain British companies who should never have been let near design and construction of non-steam locomotives. Clayton and North British spring to mind.

4:54 the class 17 had neither steam heat or ETH. They did however have a through steam pipe. Also, they had Paxman engines, not Paxton.

4:20 I wonder if this photo was taken at Ardrossan shed. I took a similar photo back in the early 70s when the last members of the class were being stored there. As a lover of steam, I used to hate seeing them pour out their thick smoke in Fife during the 60s but by the 70s I was feeling sorry that we were losing the mix of designs as standardisation began to take over. Thankfully, one of them has been preserved and probably runs in better condition than it ever did under BR. One my uncles was a driver at Dunfermline shed (62C) and I actually got to visit the cab of one of them. Never travelled in one of them though I did get to drive a Class 37 from Alloa to Dunfermline one evening when I was supposed to be revising for a French test the next day.

I recall seeing D8509 on a test train through Millers Dale station on the now closed line to Matlock from Buxton, back in 1962.

I love this unusual loco and my n gauge model runs superbly and gets a lot of use on my layout.

Nice looking loco. Used to see them on the main line hauling product from Jarrow Steel works. Shame they were unsuccessful.

Interesting and quite good looking engine. Real pity it failed in service. In Germany on the other hand we had (have) with the class V100 a mid cab design that was hugely successful, starting service in 1958 (over 750 build) and being decommisioned by the Bundesbahn only in 2004. Many of them are now still in service with private companies - and will reach surely service life of over 70 years. Similar engine design was built by the east german Reichsbahn in vast numbers too.

Excellent video I can't believe I'm only just now discovering this channel

I remember these locomotives in their afterlife at Hemelite, and went on an enthusiast trip from their Cupid Green base to the outskirts of Harpenden and back. There were actually two Hemelite locomotives although one failed early on and then became a spares donor.

Great video, the class used to haul freight over the Waverley route

My dad did a training course on them as a fitter. Some were shedded at Leith Central in Edinburgh.