In 1988 BritishRail Engineering Limited was split between the major engineering works, which became BREL (1988) Ltd, and the (mostly smaller) works that were used for day-to-day maintenance of rolling stock, which became BritishRail Maintenance Limited (BRML).
Foster Yeoman's class 59s proved extremely reliable, and it was not long before quarry company ARC and privatised power generator National Power also bought small numbers of Class 59s to haul their own trains.
BritishRail was to be broken up into over 100 separate companies, with all relationships between the successor companies controlled by legal contracts and supervised by the Office of the Rail Regulator and, in the case of the passenger railway, the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF).
BritishRail assigned Class55 to the twenty-two English Electric Type 5 express diesel locomotives built in 1961/2 and used for high-speed service on Britain's East Coast Main Line between London King's Cross and Edinburgh.
By 1966 they began to be painted in corporate Rail Blue with yellow ends, this generally coinciding with a works repair and the fitting of air brake equipment, the locomotives originally having only vacuum braking.
However, it was soon realised that the class had a limited future; it was not considered economic to maintain such a small and totally non-standard class of locomotive for secondary services, and the end of the decade saw the first withdrawals from service.
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