"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...

I thought though that it was used by the British Transport Police as
part of such campaigns. I also thought that it was used specifically on
trips when the police and railway staff wished to travel along "hot
spot" routes and then leap out and grab offenders who were committing
criminal acts? Perhaps I am misrembering the feature on the
Trainspotting series that is shown on Discovery Home and Leisure every
so often. Lew Adams - ex gen sec of ASLEF - was involved in getting the
loco set up for its new role.

47 829 was a general user locomotive when it was part of the Virgin
CrossCountry fleet and, as a previous poster remarked, was repainted for
publicity purposes. It has never had any designated role outside of general
traffic use. When it was made redundant from the Virgin CrossCountry pool it
was returned to the leasing company and was subsequently leased by
Freightliner, in order to alleviate their locomotive shortage.

Yesterday it was engaged in transferring two Class 317 electric units,
together with barrier wagons, from Hornsey WAGN depot to Bedford Thameslink
depot as train 4Z78. Locomotive 47 843 "Vulcan" was at the opposite end of
the formation, which was operating in "top-and-tail" mode (i.e. one
locomotive at each end of the formation, to avoid the need for run-rounds).
With the blockade of the the through Thameslink route from this weekend
(until 2005) Thameslink are borrowing twelve Class 317 units from WAGN to
operate on the northern half of their network between St. Pancras and
Bedford, to augment the normal Class 319 units. The 317s were the units that
were originally built for the BedPan electrification in the early 1980s,
prior to Thameslink, and they have grandfather operating rights over the
route.