Condor (train)

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.

[3][4] These were smaller, lighter, wooden containers which resembled a demounted railway wagon body, included the curved roof.

[6] Each Condor train was of 27 four-wheeled conflats, of a new design with roller bearing axles to allow the fastest running and without the risk of stopping for a 'hot box'.

The 10 hour long service required a very brief, two minute,[8] stop at Carlisle,[iii] at the change of a crew shift, rather than any limitation of the train.

The first Condor services were hauled by pairs of the newly built Metro-Vick Type 2 Co-Bo locomotives, later known as the class 28.

Pairs were needed as the dieselisation process was still new to Britain and the more powerful Type 4 locomotives were in short supply and in demand for passenger services.

[iv] Their 'Red Circle' connection system of multiple working was not widely used on BR, compared to the contemporary 'Blue Star', and few other classes used it; hence the Metro-Vicks were used throughout.

The Condor service was well-suited to the Metro-Vicks, as the night working allowed a relatively constant power output, with little other traffic to cause signals checks.

These wrapped around the corners of the cab, to give a better view to the sides, but the engine's vibration could be enough to make the glass panes fall out of their frames.

[13] In 1961, the unreliable Metro-Vicks were all withdrawn temporarily for their engines to be refurbished by the makers, Crossley, in the hope of avoiding their problems.

[citation needed] When the Class 28s returned, they had also had their distinctive wrap-around windshields replaced with flat glass, which no longer tended to fall out.

An important one was Ford, who used this to integrate car production across Europe, shipping bodyshells for final assembly across the Channel, by the Dover–Dunkerque train ferry.

[17] Railway artist Terence Cuneo produced a poster, Night Freight for BR(M), showing a Metro-Vick hauled Condor crossing a Black 5 steam loco, outside a coaling depot.