EWS (English, Welsh & Scottish Railway)

English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS) was the dominant British rail freight operator formed at the privatisation of British Railways in 1996, created by the merger of three of the six freight companies established from the former BR freight operations — Loadhaul, Mainline Freight, and TransRail Freight — under the ownership of Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation of the United States. EWS ultimately controlled approximately 90 per cent of the British rail freight market, operating the bulk of the coal, steel, aggregate, automotive, and intermodal container traffic on the national network.

EWS's most consequential single decision was the order for 250 Class 66 diesel-electric locomotives from General Motors' Electro-Motive Division, delivered between 1998 and 2000 — the largest single order for diesel locomotives in British railway history since the BR modernisation programme. The Class 66's combination of EMD reliability, American freight locomotive robustness, and competitive price transformed British freight operation, displacing the surviving BR-era Class 37, 47, 56, and 58 types within a few years. A smaller order for Class 67 locomotives served EWS's mail and charter passenger requirements.

EWS was sold to Deutsche Bahn in 2007 and rebranded as DB Schenker Rail (UK) in 2009, subsequently becoming DB Cargo UK. The EWS maroon-and-gold livery, visible on Class 66s throughout the 2000s, remains one of the most recognisable freight railway colour schemes of the privatisation era.