what is it?
Class 19 is the name given to an experimental railway locomotive that was constructed using a Mark 3 DVT. The locomotive is part of a project funded by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) to test the viability of combining hydrostatic transmission with a form of regenerative braking that can reduce engine emissions. Hydrostatic transmissions have been used previously for rail vehicles, but only for slow-speed track maintenance vehicles and similar, not for mainline locomotives. Diesel-hydraulic locomotives instead use a hydrodynamic, i.e.
who runs it
base stats
Bars compare against all trains: 600 km/h (maglev), 1,700 seats; power, weight and number built on a log scale up to 20 MW, 1,000 t and 20,000 built.
fun facts
- First built 38 years ago, in 1988.
- 18.8 m long: about 4 cars parked nose to tail.
diesel locomotive: A diesel engine on board drives the wheels, usually through a generator (diesel-electric).
spec sheet
- built
- 1988–2017
- number built
- 1
- kind
- Diesel-hydrostatic
- traction
- diesel
- builders
- BREL
- designer
- BREL
- operators
- Artemis Intelligent Power
- top speed
- —
- power
- —
- gauge
- 1,435 mm standard gauge
- length
- 18.8 m
From the Wikipedia infobox and Wikidata. Blank means the sources don't say.
Sources: Wikidata Q56280034, Wikipedia: British Rail Class 19 (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-25.