GB Railfreight announces a five-year extension deal with Alvance
GB Railfreight (GBRf) has announced a five-year extension with Alvance British Aluminium. The deal will see GBRf continue to transport alumina powder from The Port of Blyth, Northumberland, to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands, where it will be used to make aluminium at one of the world’s greenest metal production plants.
GB Railfreight started working with Alvance back in 2010, and will continue to run two trains a week, carrying over 70,000 tonnes of alumina powder a year. With each train journey, this will replace up to 129 HGVs making the 250-mile journey from Blyth to Fort William.
GB Railfreight repaints converted 69009 with a classic maroon livery
GB Railfreight (GBRf) has outshopped one of its recently converted class 69s with a classic livery from the 1960s. After receiving some suggestions from its staff on the livery, GBRf chose the maroon colour with a half yellow front, which was historically applied to the British Rail Western Region class 52s.
Class 69 locomotive 69009 was named “Western Consort”, the name of CEO John Smith’s favourite class 52 from his trainspotting days.
The original Western Consort was a class 52 diesel hydraulic locomotive built at Crewe in 1964 and was withdrawn from British Rail service and scrapped in 1976. The maroon livery was removed from locomotives in the late 1960s as British Rail blue was applied across the fleet.
Locomotive 69009 was recently converted from a class 56060 and will enter traffic soon with the rest of the class 69 fleet.
Thank you to Arlington Fleet Services Eastleigh for repainting 69009 and to Procast Foundary for providing the naming plates.
