Metro-Cammell, formally the Metropolitan Cammell Carriage and Wagon Company (MCCW), was an English manufacturer of railway carriages,

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the ...

s and

railway wagon A railroad car, railcar (American and Canadian English), railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck (British English and UIC), also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is a ...

s, based in Saltley, and subsequently

Washwood Heath Washwood Heath is a ward in Birmingham, within the formal district of Hodge Hill, roughly two miles north-east of Birmingham city centre, England. Washwood Heath covers the areas of Birmingham that lie between Nechells, Bordesley Green, Stechfo ...

, in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

. Purchased by

GEC Alsthom GEC or Gec may refer to: Education * Gedo Education Committee, in Somalia * Glen Eira College, in Caulfield East, Victoria, Australia * Goa Engineering College, India * Government Engineering College (disambiguation) * Guild for Exceptional Ch ...

in May 1989, the Washwood Heath factory was closed in 2005. The company designed and built trains for the railways in the United Kingdom and overseas, including the Mass Transit Railway of Hong Kong,

Kowloon–Canton Railway The Kowloon–Canton Railway (KCR; ) was a railway network in Hong Kong.Legislative Council information paper CB(1)357/07-08(0 THB(T) CR 8/986/00, CB(1)1749/07-08(0/ref> It was owned and operated by the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (KCR ...

(now

East Rail line The East Rail line () is one of ten lines of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system in Hong Kong. It used to be one of the three lines of the Kowloon–Canton Railway (KCR) network. It was known as the KCR British Section () from 1910 to 199 ...

), the

Channel Tunnel The Channel Tunnel (french: Tunnel sous la Manche), also known as the Chunnel, is a railway tunnel that connects Folkestone (Kent, England, UK) with Coquelles ( Hauts-de-France, France) beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover ...

, and the Tyne and Wear Metro, and locomotives for Malaysia's Keretapi Tanah Melayu. Diesel and electric locomotives were manufactured for South African Railways, Nyasaland Railways, Malawi, Nigeria, Trans-Zambezi Railway and Pakistan. DMUs were supplied to Jamaica Railway Corporation and the

National Railways of Mexico National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

. The vast majority of

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

rolling stock manufactured in mid-20th century was produced by the company. It also designed and built the Blue Pullman for

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British ...

History

Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd

Metropolitan Railway Carriage & Wagon Co

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney - 2016-02-13 - Andy Mabbett - 35

The company was formed in 1863 as the Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd, successors to Messrs. Joseph Wright and Sons. Joseph Wright built coaches for the

London and Southampton Railway The London and Southampton Railway was an early railway company between London and Southampton, in England. It opened in stages from 1838 to 1840 after a difficult construction period, but was commercially successful. On preparing to serve Por ...

in 1837 and the London and Birmingham Railway in 1838. In 1845, he moved the carriage works from London to Birmingham, where he purchased of meadowland in Saltley, adjacent to the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway line. In 1854, the company built the first 12 carriages for the Sydney to Parramatta line, New South Wales, the first public railway in Australia, which opened in 1855. Several of those are now in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Metropolitan Amalgamated Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd

In 1902, it merged with four other carriage and wagon builders:

Ashbury Railway Carriage and Iron Company Ltd The Ashbury Carriage and Iron Company Limited was a manufacturer of railway rolling stock founded by John Ashbury in 1837 in Commercial Street, Knott Mill in Manchester, England, near the original terminus of the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne a ...

., Brown, Marshalls and Company Ltd., Lancaster Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd., and Oldbury Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd., and became the Metropolitan Amalgamated Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd. Water carrier for Mesopotamia

Metropolitan were contracted as a builder of the new tanks for the British Army during the First World War. They built all 400 of the Mark V tank and 700 improved Mark V* tanks. They were the most developed heavy tank designs to see service in the war. In 1917, Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company and

Vickers Limited Vickers Limited was a British engineering conglomerate. The business began in Sheffield in 1828 as a steel foundry and became known for its church bells, going on to make shafts and propellers for ships, armour plate and then artillery. Entir ...

took joint control of

British Westinghouse British Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company was a subsidiary of the Pittsburgh, USA based Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. British Westinghouse would become a subsidiary of Metropolitan-Vickers in 1919; and after Me ...

. In 1919, Vickers bought out the Metropolitan shares and renamed the company Metropolitan-Vickers. By 1926, they had changed their name again to Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company Ltd. In 1929, the railway rolling stock business of Cammell Laird and Company was merged as Metropolitan-Cammell Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd, the resulting company being part owned by Vickers and the Cammell Laird group. MCCW also built bus bodies. In 1932, Metro Cammell Weymann was formed by the MCCW's bus bodybuilding business and Weymann Motor Bodies. In the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, Metro again built tanks, including the Valentine tank and Light Tank Mk VIII. The Saltley works was closed in 1962 and group administration concentrated at Washwood Heath in 1967.

Closure by Alstom

In May 1989, the railway business was sold to

(now

Alstom Alstom SA is a French multinational corporation, multinational rolling stock manufacturer operating worldwide in rail transport markets, active in the fields of passenger transportation, signalling, and locomotives, with products including the A ...

). The last trains to be built at the

plant before its closure in 2005 were the

Class 390 The British Rail Class 390 ''Pendolino'' is a type of electric high-speed passenger train operated by Avanti West Coast in the United Kingdom, leased from Angel Trains. They are electric multiple units using Fiat Ferroviaria's tilting train Pe ...

"Pendolino"

tilting train A tilting train is a train that has a mechanism enabling increased speed on regular rail tracks. As a train (or other vehicle) rounds a curve at speed, objects inside the train experience centrifugal force. This can cause packages to slide ab ...

s for the West Coast Main Line modernisation.

Products

Heavy rail

* Southern Railway "Brighton Belle" EMU * Southern Railway "Crystal Palace" EMU * Southern Railway "Coulsdon North & Sutton stock" EMU *

LNER Tyneside electric units The LNER electric units were electric multiple units that ran on the Tyneside Electrics, a suburban system based on the English city of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1937 the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) received articulated twin passenger ...

* LNER Shenfield line electric units (driving motors and intermediate trailers only) * LNER Glossop line electric units (driving motors and intermediate trailers only) * The Blue Pullman * Metro-Cammell Lightweight "Heritage" diesel multiple unit * British Rail Class 101 "Heritage" diesel multiple unit *

British Rail Class 111 The Class 111 DMUs were based on Class 101/2s, but with different engines. The only external body difference was on the final batch of cars where a four character headcode box was fitted above the front cab windows, with the destination indica ...

"Heritage" diesel multiple unit * British Rail Class 151 diesel multiple unit *

British Rail Class 156 The British Rail Class 156 ''Super Sprinter'' is a diesel multiple unit passenger train. A total of 114 sets were built between 1987 and 1989 for British Rail by Metro-Cammell's Washwood Heath works. They were built to replace elderly first-gen ...

"Super Sprinter" diesel multiple unit * British Rail Class 373 "TGV" electric multiple unit * British Rail Class 465/2 "Networker" electric multiple unit * British Rail Class 466 "Networker" electric multiple unit * British Rail Class 483 electric multiple unit (Originally constructed as London Underground 1938 Stock) *

British Rail Class 503 British Rail Class 503 trains were electric multiple units. They were introduced in two batches. The first were in 1938, by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) with a further batch (built to a similar design) in 1956 by the then nat ...

electric multiple unit *

British Rail Mark 4 The British Rail Mark 4 is a class of passenger carriages built for use in InterCity 225 sets on the East Coast Main Line between King's Cross, Leeds and Edinburgh. Withdrawals began in 2019, with some being sold for further use with Tra ...

coaching stock * Arlanda Express ( X3) electric multiple unit * Via Rail Renaissance Fleet * MTR Metro Cammell EMU (AC) (

, Hong Kong – formerly operated by

, leased to MTR post-merger)

Rapid transit

London Underground

* London Underground Standard Stock (Bakerloo, Central, Piccadilly, Northern lines) * London Underground 1935 Stock (Central line) * London Underground 1938 Stock (Northern, Bakerloo, Piccadilly, East London and Central lines) * London Underground R49 & R59 Stock (District line) *

London Underground 1959 Stock The 1959 Tube Stock was a type of London Underground tube train constructed in the late 1950s. They were intended for use on the Piccadilly line, but also saw use on several other tube lines. It was the first production tube stock to have unpai ...

(Piccadilly line, then Bakerloo and Northern line) * London Underground 1962 Stock (Central line) * London Underground 1967 Stock (Victoria line) * London Underground C69 and C77 Stock (Circle, District and Hammersmith & City Lines) *

London Underground 1972 Stock The London Underground 1972 Stock is a type of rolling stock used on the London Underground. The 1972 Stock was originally ordered to make up the shortfall in trains on the Northern line's 1959 Tube Stock fleet, but is nowadays used on the B ...

(Bakerloo line) * London Underground 1973 Stock (Piccadilly line) * London Underground D78 Stock (District line) *

London Underground 1983 Stock The London Underground 1983 Stock was a class of electric multiple unit built by Metro-Cammell for use on London Underground's Jubilee line. The 1983 Stock could be considered the last train to be designed by London Underground; it was the las ...

(Jubilee line) *

London Underground 1986 Stock The London Underground 1986 Tube Stock consisted of three prototype electric multiple units built for the London Underground in 1986/87 that led to the development of the 1992 Stock. History In 1984, London Transport ordered three different ...

(Central line) * London Underground 1995 Stock (Northern line) * London Underground 1996 Stock (Jubilee line) *

London Underground battery-electric locomotives London Underground battery-electric locomotives are battery locomotives used for hauling engineers' trains on the London Underground network where they can operate when the electric traction current is switched off. The first two locomotives were ...

Other systems

* Glasgow Subway rolling stock (

Glasgow Subway The Glasgow Subway is an underground light metro system in Glasgow, Scotland. Opened on 14 December 1896, it is the fourth-oldest underground rail transit system in Europe after the London Underground, Liverpool's Mersey Railway and the Budap ...

, Scotland) * Tyne and Wear Metrocars ( Tyne & Wear Metro, England) * MTR Metro Cammell EMU (DC) ( Kwun Tong line, Tsuen Wan line, Island line, Tseung Kwan O line, Disneyland Resort line, Hong Kong – operated by

MTR The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is a major public transport network serving :Hong Kong. Operated by the MTR Corporation Limited (MTRCL), it consists of heavy rail, light rail, and feeder bus service centred on a 10-line rapid transit network ...

) * Birmingham Maglev ( Birmingham International Airport – 3 carriages built, in service from 1984–1995)

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{Cite book , title=The 'R' Stock Story , last=Connor , first=Piers , year=1983 , publisher=London Underground Railway Society , location=Hemel Hempstead , isbn=0-9508793-0-4

External links

MCW archives at the Historical Model Railway Society, at Butterley in Derbyshire

Metro-Cammell website
Locomotive manufacturers of the United Kingdom Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom Former defence companies of the United Kingdom Defunct bus manufacturers of the United Kingdom Rolling stock manufacturers of the United Kingdom 1925 establishments in England 2005 disestablishments in England Manufacturing companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands Defunct companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands United Kingdom in World War I History of the tank United Kingdom in World War II British companies disestablished in 2005 British companies established in 1925 1989 mergers and acquisitions