British Rail Switch to Multigrade

Abstract

British Rail uses more than 700m litres of fuel oil a year for diesel traction engines. Successive oil crises gave impetus to the development of multigrade oils which would achieve fuel economies in the diesel engines. Since no data was available on possible benefits of multi‐grade oils in large, medium‐speed diesel engines, it was necessary for BR to pioneer developments in this application which imposes special constraints on the formulations.