The Córas Iompair Éireann 001 Class locomotive was manufactured by Metropolitan-Vickers at their Dukinfield Works in Manchester. The 001 Class locomotive was the backbone of mainline passenger and freight train services on the Irish railway network for forty years from 1955 until the mid-1990s when they were replaced by the new 201 Class.

Engines

Crossley

Initially they were fitted with eight-cylinder two-stroke, port-controlled Crossley engines. These were a loop scavenge type, which utilised a patented principle that recycled the normally wasted exhaust-pressure pulse to boost charge air in the cylinder. They produced 1200 hp at 625 rpm and could do 120 km/h. The original sandboxes, which were used to improve traction with the rail, were removed after a few years. Their Crossley engines proved to be notoriously unreliable from the start. Amongst a plethora of problems were: There were also problems with generator and motor flashovers. Similar problems were also encountered on the Crossley-engined Western Australian Government Railways X Class and British Rail Class 28 locomotives.

EMD

These problems were tackled between 1968 and 1971 through the progressive re-engining of the entire class with a 1650 hp 12-cylinder EMD 645E engine (a similar process was implemented for the original 201 Class). However, this power output stressed the ability of the original cooling and transmission systems and the engine output was reduced to 1325 hp for improved reliability. When built, these locomotives were originally numbered A1 to A60, and as locomotives were re-engined, they had the suffix 'R' added to their number. From 1972, the prefix letters were dropped and the locomotives were renumbered 001 to 060.

Accidents and incidents

Preservation

Four A class locomotives survived into preservation, the details of which are outlined in the table below:

Model

The A Class is available as a 4mm scale (OO) ready-to-run (RTR) model from Irish Railway Models. Announced in October 2018, it was released in October 2021. In the past it has been made as a 00 gauge kit by Silver Fox Models.