• At the beginning of Virgins reign as operator of Cross Country, they operated a total of 27 Porterbrook owned Class 47s. These were:
  47805 47806 47807 47810 47812 47814 47817 47818 47822 47825 47826 47827 47828 47829 47831 47839 47840 47841 47843 47844 47845 47847 47848 47849 47851 47853 47854

• All carried the Intercity livery with the swallow logo, except 47807 and 47817 which had been painted into Porterbrooks' new white and purple colours.

• Unreliability of these ageing locos, led to the hire of 47702 ‘County of Suffolk, and 47711 ‘County of Hertfordshire’ from E.W.S. These ex Scotrail push-pull machines (which are also fitted with ETS and twin fuel tanks) gained Virgin livery before entering service towards the end of 1998.

• 47825 ‘Thomas Telford’, became surplus to requirements during spring 1999, and passed to Anglia Railways as a thunderbird loco. It was later stored and became the first Class 57 with ETH as 57601.

• The conversion of the Blackpool-Portsmouth (1O71/1M32) HST service to semi-permanent Class 47 operation in late 1999 was one of the factors which led to three more 47’s joining the ILRA pool, 47747 ‘Res Publica’ (in late February 2000), 47766 ‘Resolute’ (in early February), and 47769 ‘Resolve’ (joining in December 1999). All three had been revived from storage, which they had been placed into after failures whilst working for their owner, EWS on parcels workings.

• 47766 lasted for barely a month (it may have worked some trains during January, but was only transferred to ILRA at the beginning of February). It failed at Wellington whilst working 1V35 0636 Wolverhampton – Plymouth on 26th February 2000, and was rescued by two Class 67’s! 766 was subsequently stored.

• 47741 ‘Resilient’ then replaced 47766 in the ILRA pool.

• The withdrawal of 47702 in late March 2000, led to 47722 ‘The Queen Mother’ coming straight from parcels work to join the ILRA 47’s on daily passenger service.

• Then, the other ex Scotrail 47 – 711 was withdrawn in May 2000, and immediately replaced by 47750 ‘Royal Mail Cheltenham’. 47711’s last working is BELIEVED to be 1N11 0647 Preston-Blackpool on 17th May 2000, and 47750’s first whilst in the ILRA pool was the 1M32 1418 Portsmouth & Southsea – Blackpool North on the same day (47711 was booked to work this train). If you know that 47711 worked later than this, email me at the usual address, and the information will be added here!

• An additional 47/7 was added in June 2000, 47742 ‘The Enterprising Scot’. Since this, the fleet has remained stable, and the majority have now gained Virgin livery (including the ex-Res 47/7’s – see the fleet profiles for livery information).

• Fragonsets small fleet of ex- Scotrail 47/7s (47701, 47703, 47709, 47710, 47712, plus single tank 47488) have regularly supplemented the ILRA 47’s, and also LNWR’s 47705 ‘Guy Fawkes’ worked back in 1999.