Bowesfield Works was a
railway 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 ...
manufacturing plant in
Stockton-on-Tees. The works was operated by a joint venture company called Metropolitan Vickers-Beyer Peacock from 1949 until 1960.
Works history
Metropolitan-Vickers
Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial el ...
and
Beyer, Peacock & Co. formed a joint venture company in November 1949 to design and manufacture diesel, electric and gas turbine locomotives. Because Beyer, Peacock's
Gorton works was still busy producing steam locomotives, an alternative site for the new locomotives to be built had to be found. A factory at Yarm Road,
Stockton-on-Tees, on which Metrovicks had acquired a lease in 1947, was chosen as the location. The factory which had been built in 1946 for the American construction machinery company LeTourneau, was almost brand new, and covered an area of around , later extended to over by Metrovicks. The works had its own railway siding running from Bowesfield Junction to the north east of the works. Initially the factory was used by Metrovicks for steel fabrication work before locomotive manufacture began in 1949.
Locomotives built
Brazil
The first locomotives built at the works were fourteen electric locomotives for the
Rede Mineira de Viação railway company of
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. They were ,
Bo-Bo
B-B and Bo-Bo are the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and British classifications of wheel arrangement for railway locomotives with four axles in two individual bogies. They are equivalent to the B′B′ and Bo′Bo′ classifications ...
, gauge locomotives. This was followed by another order for ten similar locomotives for
Rede de Viação Paraná-Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Australia
In 1954–55, the works built forty