Friends of the Rail Forum

This picture of a north American loco hauling a bunch of Class 66 locos destined for UK gives a clear indication of the difference in loading gauges!

This is a really interesting photo.

Gives a great idea of the size difference.

Have all the Class 66's been delivered now?

They keep ordering new batches of them so it's difficult to keep track of deliveries.

What I find interesting is that, despite the fact that these locos have been purchased in a variety of variants and updates by a variety of operating companies in the UK, they have all been integrated into the same common numbering scheme (66.x.yy where x is the variant number and yy is the serial within the variant) -- that each indivdual owner has not created its own numbering scheme.

As I understand it, that's because there is a national numbering system called TOPS (Total Operations Processing System) which allocates numbers to all locomotives, and to diesel and electric multiple units.

Locomotives (and ships, as British Rail still operated its own ferries when TOPS was introduced) are in the 0xx range as follows: 01-69 Diesel locomotives, 70-79 DC electric and electro-diesel locomotives, 80-96 AC and multi-voltage electric locomotives, 97 Departmental (non-revenue earning) locomotives, 98 Steam locomotives and 99 Ships.

Locomotives have a five digit number (the initial zero is omitted) while multiple units have six digits.

Not sure if this is the right place to put this but yes,Class/Series 66 are still in production, one of the latest countries to use them being Egypt.
If anyone is interested this fascinating class of locomotives there is an excellent [Dutch run I believe] website in English at...
http://class66.railfan.nl/
Certainly well worth a look.
Cheers Bernard