About Growl
Missing Details
Date to be confirmed
© Robin Lush
'English Electric Growl' was a project which began in the late 1990's, initially being set up on a tied server as 'ee12csvt', each page was manually constructed and it included information on the operational, stored and preserved Class 37's dotted around the UK network. There was also a news area which displayed information on future railtours, preserved events, booked passener workings, all of which included some low resolution images.
The main topic of interest was the Class 37 built for British Railways, or the British Transport Commission at the time, but it was already known that English Electric had used the 12-Cylinder Charge Cooled V form engine for other applications which covered a number of marine uses and as static drive units at various industrial sites across the UK. At that stage of the site, the other known rail traction uses of the engine were investigated and the site expanded using just html coding, including those exported from the UK to countries in Africa and those that were built in Queensland Australia for the market developing in the southern hemisphere.
It was at this stage that the site underwent a change from being a static site to a dynamic one, being expanded to include photographs and news on the 555 12CSVT engine fitted locomotives around the globe, 309 for the UK Market, 105 for Australia and 136 split between Sudan, Rhodesia, Kenya and Ghana. It was also decided to make plans for the future, hoping to add details on the alternative uses of the engines at some point, hence the reason that the current web address came into being.
Since it's conception, the website evolved to include a wide range of information and media types, but personal issues meant that to reduce costs some refinements and reductions were needed. Further issues were encountered when the site was hacked, not just once, not just twice, but three times! These attacks meant that some considerable time was need to improve the security of the site, and this meant quite a bit of downtime, with the site being on and off line for a number of months at a time trying to get on top of the issues. After a couple of failed attempts to make an updated site available, during 2022 a real effort was made to get the site over the summit of a very long climb, and as you are reading this page, the summit has been passed and hopefully the journey going forward will be a breeze with very few obstacles to work around.
There are plans to develop new areas on the site, and suggestions what can be added would be much appreciated. Please have a look around, I am sure you will find something of interest within the site, if you think that you may be able to contribute in any way, e.g. Photographs, Booklets, News, etc. you can get in touch with me using the contact form or, if you already know my address, through e-mail.