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Stanleyville Cab Car 52225

The Class 150 Sprinters are a class of diesel multiple-units. 137 units (two of them being 3-car sets) were built by British Rail Engineering Limited in York from 1984 to 1987. There were three subclasses of the 150's, and they were built to replace many of the earlier, first-generation DMUs, which had entered service in the 1950s and 60s.

The three subclasses were 150/0, 150/1 and 150/2. The 150/2 is what we'll be focusing on here, but I will quickly mention that the two 150/0's were the prototype units. They were built in 1984, and are the only 150's to be built as three-car units. The fifty 150/1's looked much the same as the prototypes, but were built as 2-car units instead of 3. The 150/2's were the most common subclass. 85 of these units were built, and they are the only 150's to have gangways on the cab ends. This allows for passengers and the guard to walk from one unit to another, if they are working in multiple.

The technical specifications of the Class 150/2's are as follows:

Individual Coach length - 20.06 metres
Width - 2.16 metres
Height - 3.774 metres
Floor Height - 1.44 metres
Fleet numbers - 150201 to 150285
Top Speed - 121 kilometres per hour
Engine Type - Cummins NT855R5 (1 per coach)
Power Output - 286 horsepower (per engine)
Gauge - 1,435 millimetres

The 150's have their engines mounted underneath the floor. This is a very common arrangement on British diesel multiple units. One of the few exceptions was the Class 210, which had an engine room at one end of the unit.

Over their 35 years of service, Class 150 units have served all over England and Wales. Specific cities that 150's have run to include:

(England)
Penzance
Plymouth
Exeter
Bristol
Gloucester
Ipswich
Cambridge
Norwich
Great Yarmouth
Birmingham
Manchester
Liverpool
Leeds
Knaresborough
York

(Wales)
Newport
Ebbw Vale Town
Cardiff
Swansea
Shrewsbury

Today their are just three Train Operating Companies still using Class 150's in their fleet: Great Western Railway have 22 (the two 150/0's and twenty 150/2's) while Northern have all fifty 150/1's (some being transferred from GWR) and twenty-eight 150/2's. The 3rd TOC to use 150's is Transport for Wales, which has thirty-six Class 150/2's as part of their fleet.

150225 is one of the Northern units. Like most of their 150's, 225 is used around the Manchester, Buxton, Liverpool and Leeds areas. Unfortunately most of Northern's older diesel multiple units are set to be replaced in the next few years, as part of Northern's introduction of the Class 195 diesel and 331 electric units.

In my fictional history, 150225 was retired in late 2016, after being deemed surplus to requirements. Meanwhile, the Stanleyville Railway was trying to sort out a problem. Their service from Stanleyville Forest to Stanleyville Pier was going to be converted into a push-pull operation. This was because the locomotives used on this service - an F7A and FP7 pair - had very poor visibility when running backwards. Originally the railway wanted to use two SD cab-cars that were once used in Auckland commuter service. KiwiRail were unwilling to sell the coaches, and so the SR was forced to look elsewhere.

After a visit to see the unit at Allerton Depot in Liverpool, Gary Porcelain (The SR's manager) decided to buy the now-redundant 150225 and bring it to New Zealand. The two-car unit arrived on the ship at the Port of Tauranga on the 19th of February 2017.

After arriving at Stanleyville Forest, work began on converting the former Class 150 coaches into cab-cars. This involved fitting the F7A and FP7 with remote control equipment, removing the 150's engines and repainting the Sprinter coaches into SR Purple. The converted cab-cars (now numbered as 57225 and 52225 respectively) started running on the Pier services in November 2017. The trains are now arranged with the locomotives on the pier end, and the cab-cars at the Stanleyville Forest end.