British Industrial Steam Locomotives: A Pictorial Survey

By David Mather

A pictorial history of the many producers of industrial steam locomotives in Great Britain, from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

The first steam locomotives used on any British railway worked in industry.

The use of new and second hand former main line locomotives was once a widespread aspect of the railways of Britain.

This volume covers many of the once numerous manufacturers who constructed steam locomotives for industry and contractors from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

David Mather has spent many years researching and collecting photographs across Britain, of most of the different locomotive types that once worked in industry.

This book is designed to be both a record of these various manufacturers and a useful guide to those researching and modelling industrial steam.

Praise for British Industrial Steam Locomotives

“A good introduction, hopefully it will encourage some of those who have only been involved during the preservation period to take a wider interest in the historical aspects of the subject.” —Industrial Locomotive Society

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526770196

David Mather

DAVID MATHER, originally from Bolton, Lancashire, where his early interests in railways centred on his home shed, coded 26C later 9 K and the nearby West Coast Main Line, which he documented until the end of steam in 1968.The author relocated to the Midlands and later to York which rekindled his interest in railways and steam traction, the digital era allowing his work to be made available to a wider audience.Now a photographer and railway author, his most recent book being Exploring the Lake District with the Furness Railway Tours, which has a foreward by Eric Robson, broadcaster and chairman of the Wainwright Society.The Railways of York was shortlisted for the Ian Allan railway book of the year award, Ian Allan writing the foreward for the authors first book, Running Out of Steam.Other Titles include, Riding the Settle and Carlisle, East Lancashire Railway Recollections, Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Recollections and Great Britain’s Heritage Railways.

Book preview

Introduction – Early Days

Richard Trevithick is credited with building the first flanged wheeled steam locomotive in 1804. George Stephenson built them to haul coal wagons on the Hetton Colliery railway in County Durham in 1822, an inspired move which was rapidly copied elsewhere when similar problems of moving heavy loads were encountered. It would not be long before it was realised that money could also be made from the carriage of passengers as well as freight, and so the railway era was born as steam power took over from pack horses and canal barges.

By the 1840s, main line railways were becoming well established and light engines were increasingly required to work the branch lines and in the numerous works yards which fed the trunk routes. Amongst the earliest manufacturers were George England from his works in the Old Kent Road in London and W. Bridges Adams of Bow, East London, who were building tank engines from 1848. By 1855, E.B. Wilson was doing the same for the collieries near his works in Leeds and though his enterprise was short-lived, closing in 1858, Manning Wardle had set up business next door and took over many of Wilson’s designs. The building of industrial steam engines was soon flourishing in Leeds, with Hudswell Clark and the Hunslet Engine Company also in production within six years, while the older established firm of Kitson & Company continued to expand their range of industrial and main line locomotives. At the same time, the business of John Fowler, previously associated with agricultural steam ploughing and road engines, was being expanded to include industrial locos and in nearby Sheffield, business was starting to boom for the Yorkshire Engine Company as many more mines and quarries were opened up, factories and works became larger and there was an increasing need for light, slow-speed locos with the short wheel-base necessary to negotiate the tight curves found in such locations.

Elsewhere, such was the growing demand for industrial steam engines that the firm of Andrew Barclay started supplying them for the collieries around Kilmarnock from 1859, soon to be followed by several more builders in the town, while in Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, the works of Dűbs & Co, Neilson and the North British Locomotive Company became major producers. In the south of England, Bristol was becoming a major engine building centre with the firm of Fox Walker being established there in the early 1860s, the company being bought by Peckett & Sons who developed the Fox Walker designs. Later in 1889, Edwin Walker established the Avonside Engine Company in the city, a company which continued building engines until about 1930, when the works was forced to close with the goodwill being taken over by the Hunslet Engine Company.

Not surprisingly, the north east of England too became a major location for steam engine building, where Black Hawthorn of Gateshead were important suppliers until about 1900. Hawthorn Leslie of Newcastle and the famous Robert Stephenson Company continued to thrive, building large numbers of industrial and main line locos for both the home market and for export. Similarly, in the Lancashire area, Bayer Peacock and Nasmyth Wilson of Manchester, Borrows & Sons of St. Helens, the Haydock Foundry of Richard Evans and the Vulcan Foundry at Newton le Willows were all at the forefront of the continued development of industrial locomotives.

In the Midlands, Kerr Stuart and Company were doing the same from their works in Stoke on Trent, as were W.G. Bagnall in Stafford. These were the companies whose names have become forever associated with the industrial steam locomotive, but for many builders their heyday was cut short by the ravages of the First World War and then by the Great Depression which hit Britain during the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in a collapse in the demand for industrial products and the inevitable devastating effect on the economy of the northern industrial areas of the country in particular. Many well-known locomotive building firms disappeared at this time, while others merged to form larger concerns. The four or six coupled ‘saddle tank’ or ‘side tank’ were the most usual designs built, though ‘well tanks’ and even tender engines were produced but in much smaller numbers. In addition, there were the ‘fireless’ locos powered from a reservoir of steam and often employed at sites where smoke or sparks would constitute an unacceptable hazard, such as at paper mills or food factories. Then there are the crane engines, whose role as a shunter could be expanded to include the lifting of heavy materials or the righting of wayward trucks when the occasion arose. Fortunately, many of these sturdy and resilient little engines would survive the worst that the economy and world conflicts could throw at them, with large numbers continuing to be employed in the heavy industries of coalmining, metallurgy, quarrying, gas, electricity and water supply, in the docks and other transport services, as well as in chemical manufacture, engineering including vehicle building and equally significantly by the military. Here they performed stoically up to and in many cases beyond the end of steam on Britain’s main lines in 1968, often out-living their larger cousins by more than a decade. These elderly and increasingly decrepit engines continued to toil over lightly laid lines, often steeply graded and more often than not, less than well maintained, hauling their heavy loads day in and day out. But by the 1960s many of these industrial railway systems had become uneconomical as quarries were closed, blast furnaces dismantled and many works sites were overhauled and modernised, often involving replacing steam with diesel traction. The demise of the coal industry also released a large number of engines, many of which were ex-War Department ‘Austerity’ stock. Happily, this coincided with the rise of the railway preservation movement and such had been the value and the high esteem in which these small yet powerful mainly 0-6-0 saddle tanks were held that many were snapped up for little more than their scrap value and lovingly restored to earn their coal hauling passenger trains on heritage lines the length and breadth of the country.

A view of ‘industrials’ at the site of the former Market Overton Iron Quarry, opened by John Pain Ltd in 1906 and later taken over by the Stanton Ironworks, to be incorporated into Stewart’s & Lloyd’s Minerals Ltd in 1950 and again into BSC Tubes Division from 1970 until its closure in 1971. From 1972, the quarry’s engine sheds became part of a preservation scheme and were bought by ‘Flying Scotsman Enterprises’, for a time housing Pendennis Castle as well as Flying Scotsman itself. By the end of 1973, eleven locos and several items of rolling stock were on site. However, in 1974, BR closed its connecting route into the network resulting in the demise of the facility shortly afterwards. Many of the items of stock were moved to the Rutland Railway Museum – now known as ‘Rocks by Rail: The Living Ironstone Museum’ – located on the former Midland Railway mineral branch line at Cottesmore near Oakham, Rutland.

Andrew Barclay Sons & Co Ltd

A builder’s plate from an Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST locomotive built in 1924. Sister engine, works number 1823 is preserved in store at the Pontypool & Blaenavon Railway, Wales. (Roger Griffith)

Andrew Barclay’s engineering workshop was established in Kilmarnock, Scotland in 1840, initially specialising in the manufacture of gas lamps and later progressing to the building of winding engines for coal mines. It was not until 1859 that his first steam engine was built and in 1892, the firm became a limited liability company as Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. Ltd. The company produced simple yet robust locomotives mainly for industrial use and over 100 of their standard gauge examples still survive on heritage railways in Britain. From 1859, the company built over 2,000 steam locomotives and their standard four and six coupled designs continued in production until 1962 when, as the last Scottish locomotive builders, attention was switched to diesel manufacture. The successful transition from steam to diesel resulted in the building of diesel shunters for industry and Class 01 and 06 shunters for BR. In addition, examples were exported to countries including Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Sri Lanka. Like their predecessors, the sturdy diesels have also been sought after in more recent years to continue working in the heritage railway sector.

The firm was also the largest builder of fireless locomotives in the country and was an important manufacturer of crane tanks. In 1963, the company acquired the goodwill of The North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow and in 1972 merged with the Leeds-based Hunslet Group, whereupon the name was changed to Hunslet-Barclay Ltd. This company traded until 2007 when it went into financial administration and was acquired by the locomotive builder Brush Traction of Loughborough and further renamed Brush-Barclay, only to be taken over in 2011 by Wabtec, the American owned railway engineering company.

Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST 1858/1925, Ind Coope No.6, at Ind Coope Breweries, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire. The Ind Coope Company was founded in 1845 and the Burton Brewery started production in 1856. In 1961, the company merged with Ansell’s of Birmingham and Tetley-Walker of Leeds to form Allied Breweries. The Burton Brewery now operates as the Burton North Brewery of Molson-Coors.

Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST 2005/1935, Queen Mary, at Round Oak Steelworks, Brierley Hill. Staffordshire which was founded in 1857 and closed in 1982, though the steel terminal on the adjacent railway, opened in 1986 is still in use. Round Oak was the first steelworks in the UK to be converted to Natural Gas supplied