Sentinels rise to the occasion on the Horseshoe Pass

The town of Shrewsbury is synonymous with the Sentinel name in road transport terms, as it was here that hundreds of steam and diesel lorries were produced. The history of the firm can be traced back to 1875 when Stephen Alley and John Alexander MacLellan opened the Sentinel Engineering Works in Glasgow, producing a range of valves for industrial uses. In 1903 Alley & MacLellan took over the firm of Simpson & Bibby who were based at Horsehay in Shropshire. They had been working on the development of steam road vehicles, and with production moving to Scotland after their takeover, the first Sentinel steam waggon was produced in 1905.

By 1914, lack of space in Glasgow had become a problem, so the firm decided to move to Shrewsbury, with a modular factory being pre-fabricated in Glasgow and erected on the new site at Shrewsbury alongside the LNWR mainline to Crewe. In July 1915 the new factory in Shrewsbury became operational, but it wasn’t just the works themselves that were constructed. With the welfare of their workers in mind, the company built model houses for their workforce with the factory providing hot water for domestic use including central heating. Production was soon in full swing, with the company supplying