When the British Railways freight Division was privatised in 1995 , it was purchased by Wisconsin Central and rebranded as EWS (English Welsh and Scottish). This initially consisted of Rail Express Systems, which included Royal Mail contracts.  Loadhaul, Mainline Freight and Transrail Freight were quickly added to the portfolio, with a stock of 1078 locomotives of various classes, and 19,987 freight vehicles. It was quickly realised that as most of the locos and stock were becoming life expired, new motive power was required, and the General manager, Ed Burkhardt, ordered new locomotives from General Motors. These were based on the class 59 locos used by Mendip Rail for transport of minerals from the Merehead and Whately quarries in Somerset.The logo for the company now known as the 3 Beasties featured the English Lion, the Welsh Dragon, and the Scottish Stag, was chosen as a result of a competition in Rail magazine. I was a subscriber at the time and remember the competition and result.   EWS ordered 250 class 66 locomotives, and in the end more than 500 were built. The last being GBRf’s 66779 “Evening Star” in 2016. A class 66 operated by DB Schenker was the first to bring a train direct from China to it’s destination at Barking in 2017. This was DB 66136. Deutches Bundesbahn had taken over EWS’s operations in the UK following a review by the competition watchdog