Pioneering

I have been chided for failing to deliver sufficient quantities of sparkling 1960s images of steam locomotives. But I confess I am dry, so here are some sparking 1960s images of new-fangled diesel locomotives.

That first one was the pioneer mainline type, No 10000, produced by the London Midland Scottish Railway and the English Electric Company just before the end of 1947.

The next two were variants of a similar project designed by the Southern Railway and English Electric, to a very different aesthetic albeit the same shiny black livery with brushed aluminium body stripe:

These pioneers -- two of the LMS type, three of the Southern (though the third was so different from the first two that maybe it counts as two types) -- were critical to the development of the English diesel-electric locomotive.

Although none of the prototypes lasted for long, they led to the introduction of engines such as these:

And more than fifty years later, English Electric Type 3s (or, as we know them today, Class 37s) are still going strong on the mainline network.