British Rail Class 71

The British Rail Class 71 was a class of twenty-four Bo-Bo electric locomotives built in 1958 at the British Rail workshops in Doncaster for the Kent Coast main lines of the Southern Region, as part of the British Transport Commission's 1955 Modernisation Plan. They collected current from a third rail at 650 or 750 volts DC, with a flywheel booster to bridge gaps, and some also carried pantographs for yards where the supply was overhead. Rated at about 2,300 to 2,552 horsepower, they were mixed-traffic locomotives used on heavy freight and prestigious passenger trains such as the Night Ferry and the Golden Arrow. Ten were rebuilt as Class 74 electro-diesels at Crewe in 1967 and 1968, the remaining fourteen were withdrawn together at the end of 1977, and one, E5001, is preserved by the National Railway Museum.