British Rail's Class 01 diesel locomotives were a short wheelbase 0-4-0 design for limited clearance operations. Five examples were built by Andrew Barclay of Kilmarnock (Scotland) between 1956 and 1958. They were numbered 11503-11506 then D2953-2956, and two entered the BR TOPS system as 01 001 (D2954) and 01 002 (D2955). The fifth locomotive, departmental stock (maintenance work) No. 81 was renumbered D2956 in July 1967 after the original D2956 had been withdrawn. Their original depot allocation was to Stratford (30A).

01 001 and 01 002 survived in BR service because they were required to service the Holyhead breakwater, being the only locomotives light enough for that track. 01 001 was withdrawn in 1979 and 01 002 followed in 1981. They carried their original livery of British Railways black with black-and-yellow "zebra stripe" warning ends and the original British Railways "unicycling lion" emblem until the end, and were the last locomotives in BR service to do so; fittingly, because Class 01 were also the first to carry that emblem.

These locomotives had a Gardner 6 cyl. in-line, 4 stroke 6L3 engine of 153 hp (114 kW) at 1,200 rpm connected to a Wilson SE4, 4-speed epicyclic gear box with a Vulcan-Sinclair type 23 rigid hydraulic coupling, and a Wiseman 15LGB reverse and final drive unit.

Two survive in preservation; D2953 (at Peak Rail) and the first D2956 (on the East Lancashire Railway).

More recently, the subclassification 01/5 has come into use to refer to small privately owned shunters certified to run on Railtrack metals. As such, 01/5 is a collective grouping of a bunch of very different locomotives, having in common only that they're small, hitherto unclassified shunters of designs never given a BR classification.

External links

• Photo at TheRailwayCentre.com (http://www.therailwaycentre.com/Pages%20Loco/Recognition%20loco/Illus_01.html)