British Rail Class 76

The BR Class 76, known to enginemen and enthusiasts as the Woodhead tommy or simply the EM1 after its original LNER designation, was a class of fifty-seven Bo-Bo electric locomotives built between 1950 and 1953 for the Woodhead route: the electrified trans-Pennine main line from Manchester Piccadilly through the Woodhead Tunnel to Sheffield Victoria, which used the unusual 1,500 V DC overhead electrification standard rather than the 25 kV AC or 750 V DC systems used elsewhere on the British network.

The Woodhead electrification had originally been proposed by the LNER in the 1930s and finally implemented by British Railways in 1954 using the 1,500 V DC overhead system that the LNER had adopted as its standard. The Class 76 locomotives — built at Gorton Works in Manchester alongside a small batch from Dukinfield — were designed specifically for the route's demanding operating conditions: sustained climbing over the Pennines, the long Woodhead Tunnel, and heavy freight traffic in both directions. They were modern, capable locomotives that gave efficient service on one of the most challenging cross-Pennine routes in Britain.

The Woodhead route's fate, however, was sealed not by the performance of its traction but by a political and commercial decision that became one of the most controversial closures in British railway history. In 1981, British Railways closed the passenger service between Manchester and Sheffield via Woodhead, and in 1983 the freight route was closed too, ending the operation of the Woodhead electrification entirely. The timing was particularly contentious because a new Woodhead Tunnel had been bored only twenty years earlier as part of the 1954 electrification — it was barely a generation old when the route closed. The Class 76 locomotives, which had nowhere else to operate given the unique 1,500 V DC voltage, were all withdrawn and scrapped, save for one: 76020, which was preserved and is currently at Barrow Hill Roundhouse in Derbyshire.