1990; these were numbered 90001-050. Service British Rail The first member of the class, 87001, entered service in June 1973 and deliveries continued until the last of the standard locomotives, 87035, entered service in October 1974. The unique 87101 was delivered in 1975 and was used for testing until it entered regular service in 1976. The majority of the Class 87s' workload came on express passenger services from London Euston to the North West and Glasgow; they were, however, also used for heavy freight work until the early-1990s, especially steel and other heavy commodities. In 1976, 87001 was the first to be named as STEPHENSON. The following year, British Rail decided that, as the flagships of their Anglo-Scottish fleet, the Class 87s should become the new Royal Scot class. Many received names with an appropriate theme; 87001 became Royal Scot and the STEPHENSON name was transferred to 87101. During the 1980s, British Rail locomotives were allocated to separate sectors: the standard 87s were transferred to the InterCity sector and the unique 87101 was assigned to Railfreight Distribution. This change eventually saw the end of freight work for most of the class, when InterCity gained full control of the standard fleet. The class was originally painted in the then standard British Rail Blue livery; in the mid-to-late 1980s, the class was painted in various InterCity liveries. The exception was 87101, which received a Railfreight grey livery in the early-1990s. Post-privatisation Virgin Trains As a consequence of the privatisation of British Rail, all 35 87/0s were passed to rolling stock leasing company Porterbrook and were leased to InterCity West Coast operator Virgin Trains in 1997. The locomotives continued to work the same services as before, the only outward indication of the change of ownership being the repainting of the locomotives in the red Virgin Trains livery. However, Virgin's policy of introducing a new fleet of trains to quickly replace the BR-era fleet that the firm had inherited inevitably meant that the writing was on the wall for the Class 87s. As Pendolino deliveries began to come on stream from 2002 onward, 87005 City of London was the first locomotive taken out of service. Although withdrawals were slower than expected, due to the unreliability of the Pendolinos, the final day in service was set for 10 June 2005, by which time many locomotives had been withdrawn and others transferred to other operators. On