British Rail MPV

The Multiple-purpose Vehicle or MPV is a purpose-built departmental derivative of a diesel multiple unit. Twenty-five two-car units were ordered by Railtrack to enable it to replace its varied collection of ageing departmental vehicles, many of which were converted from redundant passenger stock.

The vehicles were built in Germany by Windhoff. The design is based on the Windhoff "CargoSprinter" units that are operated by Deutsche Bahn (Germany) and CRT Group (Australia). Normally a unit consists of one powered vehicle fitted with twin 265 kW (355 hp) Railpac diesel engines, semi-permanently coupled to an unpowered slave unit without engines. The later orders for the South East of England and for overhead line replacement are instead composed of two powered units, to give better acceleration and top speed. When first built there were problems with the vehicles being 'out of gauge' when running empty.

The concept of the design is that each vehicle has a driving cab and an under floor engine/transmission with Multiple unit (MU) control. The majority of each vehicle is a flat load bed that can carry combinations of 10-foot and 20-foot modules that are secured using the locking system for ISO standard containers. Modules can be changed as required to suit current requirements.

In 2005, two powered MPV units were used to form a "Freight Multiple Unit" for freight trials, made by coupling standard freight wagons in between the pair of MPV units. Temporary multiple unit control cables were run along the wagons in order to connect the two MPVs, which are acting as locomotives working as a push-pull train.