Converted diesel locos

[towerman]

Why did LUL spend all that money converting them to battery locos only to have them rusting in Ruislip Depot awaiting disposal?

[brigham]

Normal post-war railway operating procedure in Great Britain, sadly.

[t697]

In an attempt to be reasonably diplomatic from an uninvolved position, I'd say slack governance of the project.
For electric locos to gain route availability across all or most of LUL there is a lot of EMC assessment and design work to do to assure that the locos would be compatible, particularly but not exclusively with the various signalling systems. One can question whether specification and supplier selection were governed properly. And similar concern once the project was under way with contract placed. I'm not clear whether there was also supposed to be ATP provision for any of the post tripcock/trainstop signalling systems. If not, that would limit usability.
One might consider that suppliers working in the field of small locos might not have the necessary resources at hand, but there are ways of addressing that using expert help from outside or possibly from within LUL.

Then during the project the immediate need for additional locos seemed to have slackened, at least for a few years.

Perhaps someone with more intimate knowledge will put me straight if I'm wrong!

[gefw]

Perhaps they were not convinced the refurb of the "old school" battery locos was going to happen or be a success - the Drivers seem to love the new cabs.

[starlight73]

For anyone unfamiliar with this project, here is an article mentioning it. As of 2016, it cost £5m to convert the Schöma diesel locomotives to battery electrics. (Don’t know if this is for a small number or all of them)

From an outsider’s viewpoint, it seems these conversions can be difficult … given the problems on the mainline with the diesel class 230s/D trains, and the Northern class 769s. This is not to dismiss the hard work of engineers! It just seems to be not straightforward.