What’s a humble shunter doing in a book on iconic locomotives? Might well be the reaction of some readers. The answer is that such status isn’t restricted to the fast and the glamorous. It can just as easily apply to faithful subjects who have served their masters magnificently over a very long period of time – and British Railways has rarely had a servant as loyal as the 350/400hp dies el-electric 0-6-0, better known in more recent decades as the Class 08.

The other extraordinary aspect of the class is the sheer number built – almost 1,200, making it the most numerous type of loco (steam or diesel) ever to operate in Britain if the very similar Classes 09 and 10 arc included.

The antecedence of the Class 08 is quite a complex one, for its roots lie in an English Electric prototype of 1934 and other pre-war diesel shunters, particularly those of the London Midland & Scottish Railway. No. 13000 has been selected to represent the type m this book as it was the first of the huge BR licet of 1,193 examples built between 1952 and 1963, being renumbered D3000 in May 1961. After trials at Toton, it statted work at Tyseley but spent the majority of its life in the Bristol and Cardiff areas before withdrawal in 1970. That meant it never gained a TOPS number, the 08001 identity going instead to D3004 in 1974, but as is the case with many slow-running engines, it still had plenty of useful life left and was thus snapped up by the National Coal Board, spending the next 15 years in various South Wales collieries.

Preservation beckoned in 1986 when it moved to Brighton, and then Sheffield, finally settling down at Barrow Hill roundhouse, Derbyshire, where it has been restored as D3000 in the Brunswick green livery the class – nicknamed ‘Gronks’ – wore after spending their formative years in black.