N Metro-Vick Co-Bo Class 28

The Crossley engines did not prove anything like as successful as the EMD 567, developing serious stress crack issues beyond anticipated 'teething troubles'. Despite a rebuilding in 1961 to resolve most of the issues this small class of non-standard and less than successful locomotives would have only a short future. Demoted from the Condor express container trains the class worked out their time around the Cumbrian coast routes, until enough DMUs and Sulzer or EE engined locomotives became available to displace them.
Typical of these quirky locomotives after withdraw from revenue service one of them, D5705, found a temporary home with British Railways Research Division who were commencing a long-term project to investigate wheel-rail interactions. This interaction between surfaces in contact is known as Tribology and having assembled a train to monitor and record the results of applying varying braking forces needed a locomotive to haul the 'Tribology Test Train'. Although replaced by a class 24 locomotive D5705 was then adapted as a carriage pre-heating generator unit to supply electrically heated coaching stock in carrage sidings. By the early 1980s as TDB968006 the ex-locomotive was out of use at Bristol Bath Road shed and occasionally visible at the back of one of the outside tracks.
In 1985 D5705 was purchased for preservation, with restoration progressing slowly at the East Lancs Railway.