page_title: British Rail Class 33
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: British Rail Class 33 / Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: Up oil empties entering Oxford with two diesels. View northward from the Down platform at Oxford station; ex-GWR main North-South line to Birmingham etc. The train exemplifies the radical transition in the mid-20th century to road transport using internal combustion engines. It is one of the massive trains introduced in the 1960's to move petrol from the Esso Oil Refinery at Fawley near Southampton to a major distribution facility in Birmingham at Bromford Bridge: this is a train of empty tank wagons returning to Fawley, at that time via Didcot, Winchester and Southampton. The locomotives are Nos. D6527 + D6505, of the Type 3 1,550hp Bo-Bo (later Class 33) introduced in 1/60 and built by Birmingham Carriage &amp; Wagon Co.
context_page_description: The British Rail Class 33, also known as the BRCW Type 3 or Crompton, is a class of Bo-Bo diesel-electric locomotives, ordered in 1957 and built for the Southern Region of British Railways between 1960 and 1962.
  They were produced as a more powerful Type 3 development of the 1,160 bhp Type 2 Class 26. This was achieved, quite simply, by removing the steam heating boiler and fitting a larger 8 cylinder 8LDA28 version of the previous 6 cylinder engine. This was possible because of the traffic requirements of the Southern Region: locomotive-hauled passenger traffic depended on seasonal tourist traffic and was heavier in the summer, when carriage heating was not needed. In the winter, their expected use was to be for freight. Thus, they became the most powerful BR Bo-Bo diesel locomotive. The perennially unreliable steam heating boiler could also be avoided.
  A total of 98 were built by the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company and they were known as "Cromptons" after the Crompton Parkinson electrical equipment installed in them.
  Like their lower-powered BRCW sisters, the 26 and 27 classes, their bodywork and cab ends were of all steel construction.
context_section_description: The locomotives were initially needed, unusually, because of an electrification scheme. The 'Kent Coast scheme' was one of five major electrification schemes put forward by the 1955 Modernisation Plan. This scheme would remove steam from Kent, with it replaced by electrification on the heavily-trafficked lines and diesel-electrics on the remainder.
  The locomotives began service on the South-Eastern Division of the Southern Region but rapidly spread across the whole Region and many were used much further afield – an example being the weekly Cliffe (Kent) to Uddingston (South Lanarkshire) cement train which they worked as far as York (and occasionally throughout) in pairs.
  Only the then new electric train heating was fitted, rather than the ubiquitous steam heating which passenger carriages largely used. Early delivery problems and a shortage of steam locomotives resulted in many Class 24 locomotives being borrowed from the Midland Region and pairs, of 33 + 24, became common on winter passenger services. This resulted in unpopular, complex run-round manoeuvres at termini as the Class 24 needed to be coupled inside to provide steam heat. Emergency provisioning of through-piping for steam heat on some examples of class 33 alleviated this somewhat. The Southern Region was unaccustomed to the operational overhead and maintenance associated with the use of class 24 and they rapidly became unpopular. With the advent of modern stock and warmer seasons, they were returned to the Midland Region.
caption: A pair of 33s -  D6527 and D6505 at Oxford with a Bromford Bridge (Birmingham) to Fawley (Southampton) oil train in March 1964.
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