British Rail Class 166

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Class 166, no. 166202, at Evesham on 19th September 2004, with a service to London Paddington via the Cotswold Line.

Class 166, no. 166217, at Reading on 20 August 2004. This unit is painted in Thames Trains livery, but with First Great Western Link branding.

The British Rail Class 166 "Network Express Turbo" diesel multiple units were built by ABB at York Works from 1992-93. These units are the express version of the Class 165 "Network Turbo" units. They have a top speed of 90mph (suitable for mainline use), are carpeted through-out and have air-conditioning (the 165s lack the latter two features and it should be noted the 166 is similar to the Class 158 in terms of what it offers).

Twenty-one 3-car units were built, numbered 166201-221. Each unit was formed of two outer driving motors, and an intermediate motor. The technical description of the formation is DMCL+MS+DMCL. Individual carriages are numbered as follows:

• 58101-58121 - DMCL
• 58601-58621 - MS
• 58122-58142 - DMCL

They units were built to replace elderly Class 117, Class 119 and Class 121 "Heritage" DMUs, and locomotive-hauled trains on services from London Paddington along the Great Western Main Line. Their main destinations included fast-trains to Reading, Newbury and Oxford, with some services continuing beyond Oxford to Banbury and Stratford-upon-Avon, or along the Cotswold Line to Evesham, Worcester, Great Malvern and Hereford. Additionally, units are also used on the Reading to Gatwick Airport services.

When built, these units were operated by the Thames Line and North Downs Line subdivisions of Network SouthEast, and therefore these units carried NSE blue, red and white livery.

Following privatisation, the units passed to the Thames Trains franchise, who introduced a new blue, white and green livery. There were two variants of this livery; the Express livery carried by Class 166 units had full-height green swish over the doors, whereas the Class 165 units had smaller green circles over the doors.

In April 2004, operation of the Thames Trains franchise passed to the First Group, who now operate the company as First Great Western Link. The livery remains the same, but FGW Link branding has been applied over the obsolete Thames Trains logo. Since April 2006 First Great western Link has rebreanded First Great Western to co-incide with The Greater Western Franchise. In October 2006 the first unit (166220) was repainted in the new First Great Western 'dynamic lines' livery [1]

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