page_title: Condor (train)
section_title: Modernisation of British Railways
hierarchical_section_title: Condor (train) / Modernisation of British Railways
caption_attribution_description: English: Diesel-hauled Up Midland Main Line express near Millbrook. View northward, towards Bedford and the North; ex-Midland St Pancras - Leicester - Sheffield main line. The 10.25 Manchester Central - St Pancras is unusually headed by a pair of Metropolitan-Vickers 1,200 hp Type 2 (later Class 28) Co-Bo Diesel-electrics, Nos. D5703 + D5710. Introduced in 8/58, only 20 of these unusual locomotives were built: they were handicapped by limited route availability and frequently broke down, so lasted only 11 years in BR service.
context_page_description: The Condor was an overnight fast freight train service operated by British Railways between London and Glasgow from 1959 until 1965 with all freight carried in containers. The name was derived from 'CONtainers DOoR-to-Door'.
context_section_description: Following the 1955 Modernisation Plan, British Railways embarked on a series of modernisation plans in all areas of operation, including freight. 
  Faster freight services had been a goal as far back as the end of World War I, with fast, overnight services between major marshalling yards. 'Liner' or trunked services were scheduled long-haul freight services, between regional freight depots, usually run overnight. If a wagon load was in the marshalling yard that day, it could have a guaranteed next-day arrival at a similar yard, even travelling the length of the country. Part of the goal was to reduce marshalling for the railway company, who wished to concentrate freight marshalling at fewer, larger and better equipped marshalling yards. In 1928, the LNER had introduced the Green Arrow service.
  By the 1950s, there were additional target goals: still a faster freight service to be more attractive than the growing competition from road haulage, but mostly a reduction in operating costs by reducing the manual effort needed in handling freight. A key part of this was to be containerisation, replacing the network of railway goods sheds and manual loading in and out of vans, by pre-loaded containers from the customer factories loaded onto railway wagons by mechanical cranes. There would also be a centralisation of freight services: as well as the increasing development of and  investment in marshalling yards, as much freight as possible would become block trains, where a single rake of freight wagons shuttled continuously between two large depots, without needing to stop for shunting operations. Containers were key to this: road haulage would provide local flexibility to move the loads to and from the customer warehouses and the rail operation would concentrate on rapid transfers between a handful of large depots.
  The 'container' to be used for this traffic was not the modern familiar stackable intermodal container or TEU, but a much earlier version, the railway conflat. These were smaller, lighter, wooden containers which resembled a demounted railway wagon body, included the curved roof. They dated from the 1920s in design and were sized for lifting by the mobile cranes of the day. The conflat wagons were four-wheeled, vacuum-braked, and could carry either one Type B container or two smaller Type A.
caption: A pair of the pre-1961 Metro-Vick locomotives on a passenger service in 1960
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