The UK’s first GM locos

Five years before the first General Motors Class 59 was unloaded onto English metals at Southampton Docks, Northern Ireland Railways took delivery of two 111 Class locomotives from the same US-based locomotive manufacturer.

Chris Playfair

THE unloading at Dublin Port of new locomotives built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division (GM-EMD) for Coras Iompair Eireann (CIE) was a familiar sight in the 1960s and 1970s, write William Watson and Alan McFerran. However on December 16, 1980, two GM-EMD locomotives that were landed on the quayside were not destined for CIE, but for Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) – thus becoming the first GMs, and also the first US-built main line locomotives, to run in the UK. Visibly identical to CIE’s 2475hp Co-Co 071 Class, but sporting a blue livery, Nos. 111 and 112 ran together via Antrim to Belfast York Road for commissioning. They were later named Great Northern and Northern Counties respectively. NIR acquired the locos because it wanted to introduce semi-fast trains on the jointly-operated Belfast to…

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Rail Express (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2021

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