A Cowlair production plate on a North British Railway Company engine

Cowlairs Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Works, at

Cowlairs Cowlairs () is an area in the Scottish city of Glasgow, part of the wider Springburn district of the city. It is situated north of the River Clyde, between central Springburn to the east and Possilpark to the west. Administratively, in the 21 ...

Springburn Springburn () is an inner-city district in the north of the Scottish city of Glasgow, made up of generally working-class households. Springburn developed from a rural hamlet at the beginning of the 19th century. Its industrial expansion began ...

, an area in the north-east of

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, was built in 1841 for the

Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway was authorised by act of Parliament on 4 July 1838. It was opened to passenger traffic on 21 February 1842, between its Glasgow Queen Street railway station (sometimes referred to at first as Dundas Street) and ...

and was taken over by the

North British Railway The North British Railway was one of the two biggest of the five major Scottish railway companies prior to the 1923 Grouping. It was established in 1844, with the intention of linking with English railways at Berwick. The line opened in 1846, ...

(NBR) in 1865. It was named after the nearby mansion of Cowlairs, with both locomotive and carriage & wagon works. It was also the first works in Britain to build locomotives, carriages and wagons in the same place. It was located on the western side of the Glasgow-Edinburgh mainline at Carlisle Street. In September 1904, the Eastfield Running Sheds were built on the other side of the Glasgow-Edinburgh mainline, just to the north of the Cowlairs complex, to maintain locomotives and to free-up more engineering space at Cowlairs Works. They were closed in 1994 but the depot site was redeveloped in 2005 and is once again in use as a maintenance facility for Class 170 trains by

First ScotRail First ScotRail was a train operating company in Scotland owned by FirstGroup. It operated the ScotRail franchise between October 2004 and March 2015. On 17 October 2004, First ScotRail took over operations from the incumbent franchisee, ScotRai ...

Production

The first few locomotives were bought in, but in 1844, William Paton produced the

0-6-0 is the Whyte notation designation for steam locomotives with a wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and no trailing wheels. Historically, this was the most common wheel arrangement used o ...

''Hercules'' numbered 21 and ''Samson'' numbered 22. The two locomotives were used for trials as banking engines on the 1 in 42 Cowlairs incline that started as soon as the trains left Queen Street station. The two 0-6-0s were two of the world's most powerful locomotives at the time; so powerful that it was said that they caused severe damage to the track and the lining of the tunnel. The trials that began in 1844 went on until 1847 when they were stopped and the two locomotives were sold off. From then until 1909, the incline used cable haulage to assist trains; banking resumed in 1909 and continued until the withdrawal of type 2 diesels around 1980. After the NBR amalgamated into the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after London, Midland and Scottish Railway, LMS) of the "Big Four (British railway companies), Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It ope ...

at the 1923

Grouping Grouping generally refers to the creation of one or more groups, or to the groups themselves. More specifically, grouping may refer to: * Shot grouping in shooting sports and other uses of firearms * the use of symbols of grouping in mathemati ...

, new production finished, except for boilers and castings, such as brake blocks.

War work

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, like the

North British Locomotive Company The North British Locomotive Company (NBL, NB Loco or North British) was created in 1903 through the merger of three Glasgow locomotive manufacturing companies; Sharp, Stewart and Company (Atlas Works), Neilson, Reid and Company (Hyde Park W ...

, both Cowlairs and St. Rollox joined in the war effort producing, among other things,

Airspeed Horsa The Airspeed AS.51 Horsa was a British troop-carrying glider used during the Second World War. It was developed and manufactured by Airspeed Limited, alongside various subcontractors; the type was named after Horsa, the legendary 5th-century ...

gliders for the

D Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

airborne assault. Cowlairs also produced 200,000 bearing shells for

Rolls-Royce Merlin The Rolls-Royce Merlin is a British Coolant#Liquids, liquid-cooled V12 engine, V-12 Reciprocating engine, piston aero engine of 27-litre (1,650 cu in) Engine displacement, capacity. Rolls-Royce Limited, Rolls-Royce designed the engine an ...

engines.

Nationalisation and subsequent closure

nationalisation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with priv ...

, into

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commis ...

in 1948, most of the work was transferred to

Horwich railway works Horwich Works was a railway works built in 1886 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (LYR) in Horwich, near Bolton, in North West England when the company moved from its original works at Miles Platting, Manchester. Buildings Horwich Wo ...

. Cowlairs closed in 1968, the work transferring to the other

British Rail Engineering Limited British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) was the rolling stock manufacturing and maintenance subsidiary of British Rail. It was established on 1 January 1970 by the British Railways Board to operate its 14 rolling stock maintenance centres and ...

site at St. Rollox railway works.

Reuse of the site for railway purposes

The former site of the Eastfield Running Sheds was redeveloped in 2005 and is once again in use as a maintenance depot for Class 170 trains run by

. A new £200 million

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and railway infrastructure manager, infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. ...

signalling centre and maintenance depot was opened in December 2008 on the former site of Cowlairs carriage sidings, which were located opposite the works on the other side of the main railway line. A total of 450 staff relocated to the new facilities. The new signalling centre replaced the previous 45-year-old system. The maintenance depot replaced existing bases, including Cathcart, Lenzie and Shields Road. The former site of the main Cowlairs works itself was converted into the Carlisle Street Business Park and Cowlairs Industrial Estate, which has been partly occupied by a Bowmore Whisky bottling plant and some other light industrial units. There are 2 preserved steam locomotives built by Cowlairs. *

NBR G Class The North British Railway (NBR) G Class (LNER Class Y9) is a class of 0-4-0 ST steam locomotive designed for shunting. Some locomotives were equipped with small wooden tenders to carry extra coal. They were introduced in 1882 and thirty-eig ...

0-4-0ST No. 42 of 1887, preserved at the

Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway The Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway is a heritage railway in Bo'ness, Scotland. It is operated by the Scottish Railway Preservation Society (SRPS), a registered charity, and operates a total of over of track (between Bo'ness and Manuel Juncti ...

NBR K Class The NBR K Class is a class of 4-4-0 steam locomotive of the North British Railway. The first batch (later LNER Class D26) was designed by Matthew Holmes in 1902 and had driving wheels for express passenger work. Three more batches (later LNE ...

4-4-0 No. 256 of 1913, preserved at the

Riverside Museum The Riverside Museum (replacing the preceding Glasgow Museum of Transport) is a museum in the Partick area of Glasgow, Scotland, housed in a building designed by Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid Architects, with its River Clyde frontage at the new Point ...

References

* Larkin, E.J., Larkin, J.G. (1988). ''The Railway Workshops of Great Britain 1823-1986.'' Macmillan Press. {{coord, 55.882675, -4.239416, type:landmark, display=title Railway workshops in Great Britain North British Railway Locomotive manufacturers of the United Kingdom Rail transport in Scotland Companies of Scotland 1841 establishments in Scotland Springburn