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By Paul Homewood

Another electric project goes off the rails!

Rising cost of electricity forces switch to diesel

A negative reaction to Britain’s energy cost crisis has short-circuited the environmental ambitions of another rail freight carrier. This time, it’s DB Cargo UK that has has been forced to sideline an electric traction fleet on the grounds of cost. The fiasco of rocketing electricity prices has forced the Doncaster headquartered operator to pull the plug on its class 90 locomotive fleet. The twenty-four locomotives were reengineered from their original deployment on passenger express services.

Following on from last year’s temporary grounding by Freightliner of their similarly-sized fleet of electric locomotives, also class 90. DB Cargo UK has been forced to take even more drastic action, and has put its two-dozen class 90 locomotives on permanent discharge, offering them for sale or scrap. The company admits that the decision is down to operating costs, and that it does represent a blow to their own environmental imperatives.

Economic chaos forces switch to diesel

The news of the demise of DB Cargo’s fleet of Class 90 electric locomotives was widely rumoured on social media feeds and railway forums. The freight operator broke cover on Monday with a statement, attributed to chief executive, Andrea Rossi. “in the current economic climate, it simply does not make sense to incur the additional cost of running and maintaining the Class 90s when we have an alternative fleet of Class 66 locomotives at our disposal”, he said in a written update addressed to all colleagues at the company.

That the largest freight operator in the UK, with a huge reputation for environmental awareness, has been commercially forced to ditch electric traction for diesel, is a damning indictment of the economic situation in the UK.
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