Now allocated to the GROG pool (ex-EPUK), and following several weeks of shunting work at Leicester depot, No. 37901 made a triumphant main line debut on June 6 for owner Europhoenix, working an 0R56 10.59 Leicester LIP circular test run via Derby and Sheffield with No. 37510 in tow as insurance. Some 23 years and seven months have elapsed since the pioneer of the ‘Slugs’ – named after their sluggish application of power – was stored unserviceable in November 1998.
The arrival of the Class 66s in the late 1990s saw EWS undertake a mass rationalisation of its sprawling locomotive fleet that, in particular, sounded the death knell for oddballs that had somehow evaded the attention of the accountants. Among the most glaring of these were the six locomotives that made up the Class 37/9 sub-type, rebuilt between October 1986 and April 1987 as ‘Class 38’ engine test beds with six-cylinder Mirrlees Blackstone
