Electric Traction Limited was a British electric locomotive hire company. It operated some former

British Rail Class 86 The British Rail Class 86 is a class of electric locomotives built during the 1960s. Developed as a 'standard' electric locomotive from earlier prototype models, one hundred of these locomotives were built from 1965 to 1966 to haul trains on t ...

and 87 electric locomotives hired from associated company

Europhoenix Europhoenix is a spot-hire railway locomotive company in England. In addition to the hiring out of locomotives to various other operators across the United Kingdom, it commonly exports former British Rail rolling stock to operators in mainland ...

and the

AC Locomotive Group The AC Locomotive Group is a dedicated AC electric locomotive preservation society in England. It has five locomotives in its care: 81002, 82008, 83012, 85101 and 89001. History Locomotives In 1996, Pete Waterman, who had purchased the s ...

from 2010 until 2019.

Previous operations

ETL's first major operation began in 2010 when newly refurbished Class 86/7s, 86701 and 86702, entered traffic on 15 October 2010. Two days later the pair hauled their first revenue-earning train, a private charter for First GBRf from

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area ...

to London King's Cross on 17 October. They later went on to work in Winter 2009/2010 on

Royal Mail Royal Mail Group Limited, trading as Royal Mail, is a British postal service and courier company. It is owned by International Distribution Services. It operates the brands Royal Mail (letters and parcels) and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels) ...

standby services and had several operations as the

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and railway infrastructure manager, infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. ...

's standby icebreaker locomotives. By January 2013 there were seven locomotives in the fleet. In 2016, 86213, 86701 and 86702 were sold for further service in Bulgaria.

Caledonian Sleeper

When

Serco Serco Group plc is a British multinational corporation, multinational military, defence, Healthcare, health, Space industry, space, private prison, justice, Human migration, migration, customer service, customer services, and transport company ...

, with

GB Railfreight GB Railfreight (GBRf) is a rail freight company in the United Kingdom. As of 2022, it is owned by the global investment company Infracapital, itself a subsidiary of M&G plc, a UK investment group. GB Railfreight was established in April 1999 ...

contracted to provide traction, took over the ''

Caledonian Sleeper ''Caledonian Sleeper'' is the collective name for overnight Sleeping car, sleeper train services between London and Scotland, in the United Kingdom. It is one of only two currently operating sleeper services on the railway in the United Kingdom ...

'' in April 2015, issues arose with the Class 92 locomotives. Electric Traction Limited was contracted to supply 86101, 86401 and 87002, primarily to assist with stock and shunting moves but also to haul services from

London Euston Euston railway station ( ; or London Euston) is a major central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station managed by Network Rail in the London Borough of Camden. It is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

and

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

on occasions. These were hired from the

. This enabled these locomotives to remain mainline certified and available for occasional charters. With the end of this work in May 2019, the locomotives were returned to the AC Locomotive Group and subsequently sold.

References

External links

Electric Traction Limited website
{{British Rail Spot Hire Companies, state=collapsed Post-privatisation British railway companies Railway companies established in 2010 2010 establishments in England British companies established in 2010 2019 disestablishments in England British companies disestablished in 2019 Railway companies disestablished in 2019