D5503 BR green (as delivered)
Our third ‘Toffee Apple’ release represents D5503 as delivered to 30A Stratford depot in January 1958 after it quickly settled into life around East London and on the ex-Great Eastern and Midland & Great Northern Joint lines in East Anglia working almost any services that its home shed could throw at it. The 1,250hp Mirrlees Type 2s were not uprated like their ‘production’ colleagues and along with the English Electric Type 1s and Type 4s were among the most reliable of the pilot scheme locomotives, albeit underpowered. In those early years of dieselisation they could be found working everything from express trains out of Liverpool Street to Clacton, Norwich, Cambridge and King’s Lynn, block freights from Essex onto the Western and Southern Regions, busy holiday services to Great Yarmouth, Hunstanton and Lowestoft and pick-up wagonload services on the region’s extensive pre-Beeching branch line network. In April 1959 it was one of eight members of the small fleet to transfer to 31B March, although it was back at Stratford by the following December. D5503 wears its distinctive original paint scheme with ‘eggshell’ blue window surrounds and bodyside stripes which was only applied to the D5500-D5519. This lasted into the early 1960s before the small fleet started to gain the small yellow panels and were repainted into the same ‘production’ livery as carried by our model of D5501 in the second run. Renumbered 31003 in March 1974 it lasted into the final year of the type and was withdrawn in February 1980 along with 31005. It was quickly moved to Doncaster Works where it was cut up five months later.