The Restoration Years
37215 has been the property of The Growler Group since mid 1994. The purchase of the locomotive took a lot of people by surprise, firstly because of the perceived poor condition of the loco and secondly because Class 37 preservation was a new concept. So why '215?
Prior to the privatisation of British Rail, the freight side of the company was split up into three separate companies. Each had it's own locomotives, including 37's, and each was in the process of storing locomotives that were deemed as life expired or not cost effective to repair at that time. '215 fell into the later category. As a group, we were busy compiling lists of stored locomotives and making discrete enquiries as to the condition of each of these engines. Unfortunately, most of the information we received was that the loco's were either beyond hope of repair or would be stripped until every last component had been used.
Not deterred by this information a common theme was developing. Most of the loco's that were out of traffic with major failures were for main generator faults. i.e. flash-overs of the armature. We approached many different companies who repaired generators and who were capable of performing rewinds and found a range of costs from £10,000 to £15,000 for a complete rewind. This was more than we could afford, bearing in mind the cost of loco purchase and transport etc. plus any other spare parts that would be needed. Therefore, any locomotives with serious generator problems were put to the bottom of the list.
During February of 1994, it was brought to our attention that Birds scrap metal dealers of Long Marston had purchased 37029 for scrap. This came as a surprise to us as we were unaware that it had been offered for tender. We then set about contacting Birds to see if a resale of the complete loco or maybe some of it's components for spares would be possible.
While all of this was going on a tender list was received that included 37190 & 37215 but we only had a week to respond, so we had to be quick. Luckily, we had a pretty good idea of what condition the loco's were in and quickly chose '215 in preference to '190. 37190 had been at Cardiff Canton for some time and had been involved in a three-way engine and generator swap that had left a 'suspect' generator inside the loco. We knew that 215 had been heavily robbed but generally it was electrically sound. No reply was ever received from Birds and it later came to light that Pete Waterman had concluded a similar deal with them that saw 029 survive and eventually make it back out onto the Main Line. Also, while these deals were being done, a private consortium concluded the purchase of 37032.
Our bid for 215 was successful and the Class 40 Appeal successfully purchased 37190 to add to it's English Electric collection. All of a sudden there were four preserved Class 37's.
Now the hard work was to begin for the various owning groups.