Locomotive 1505 Ariadne

This is a photograph that I took at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester in August 1990.

It is one of the British Rail Class 77 Co-Co electric locomotives built at the British Rail Gorton Locomotive Works in the early 1950s for use over the Woodhead Line between Manchester and Sheffield. In 1969 all the Class 77 locomotives were sold to the Dutch national railway operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen, where they became NS 1500 Class and renumbered as such. They were withdrawn in 1985 and 1505, originally 27001 and named Ariadne, was preserved at the Manchester Science and Industry Museum.