JJohn Fowler & Co, based in the Steam Plough Works in Leeds, was well-known in the production of a wide range of agricultural machinery, notably road locomotives and ploughing engines for customers at home and abroad, many examples of which are still extant today.
The firm’s early steam locomotive orders tended to be for standard gauge customers, or for broader gauges such as 5ft 3in or 5ft 6in, and ranged from 0-6-0 tender locomotives for the London, Chatham & Dover Railway in 1866 to four members of an attractive doubleframed 0-6-0ST class in 1885 for the Brecon & Merthyr Railway, the last of which survived in industrial use until 1944, albeit rebuilt by the GWR as a pannier tank.
In 1877 or thereabouts, because of its preoccupation with agricultural matters, John Fowler & Co decided to initially distribute and then improve upon the portable track panel railway system pioneered by Paul Decauville for use on plantations or by the military, and which was normally available in 400mm (15.75 in), 500mm (19.69in) and 600mm (23.62 in) gauges.
Although not primarily interested in portable railways, 15in gauge pioneer Arthur Percival Heywood was struck by the fact that Decauville’s minimum gauge was only a little more than his own.
A surviving Fowler catalogue of October 1878 in the Museum of Rural Life at Reading University stated that “a steam locomotive is now being constructed in 16in and 20in gauges which will weigh about 30cwt empty and 36cwt with water and coal’. It was clear that Heywood was trying to persuade Fowler’s to build 16in gauge locomotives, but on balance of probabilities from examination of the maker’s photograph of of 1878, it seems that it was built to 20in gauge. Following Heywood practice, it had a boiler of the simple cylindrical firebox pattern and – pattern inside link motion driving outside valves with rocker arms projecting upwards on the outside.
