Introduced in 1962, these machines were intended to be the standard design of engine for freight trip working -- local freight, generally moved fairly slowly across the network at the beginning and end of its journey.
That type of work disappeared almost before these engines were brought into use, making them pretty pointless.
But they suffered terrible teething troubles, too. They were hopelessly unreliable, the complexity of managing the controls for two engines in one diesel-electric package proving beyond the primitive rail maintenance facilities of the time, and that was before fuel feeding problems were dealt with.
BR ordered more than a hundred before giving up on them as a bad job, and most of them were disposed of after only a handful of years in service. It was a terrific waste of cash.
Because of their appalling records, almost none of them were sold as working engines to private industry: but this one was. Ribble Cement succeeded where BR had so spectacularly failed, and their Class 17, after a couple of trivial modifications, gave robust service for several decades as an industrial engine on their private works railway.
Which is handy for us, because it means it survived until the "preservation era", and it now lives on a preserved (museum) railway in Buckinghamshire.
I also happen to think it's one of the most successful pieces of industrial styling that BR commissioned.
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