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nbr038_1869_rebuild_Drummond_livery_dwg

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Engine wheelbase 7’ 6” + 7’ 10”: wheels 3’ 8” + 6’ 0”

In 1869 Cowlairs works turned out two nominal “rebuilds” of R. & W. Hawthorn singles thatcomprised a great deal of material from other sources. Little is known about the first, No.37, although it had the same wheelbase as its more famous sister locomotive No. 38. 38clearly shared a large number of design features with William Steel Brown’s 2-4-0s of theEdinburgh and Glasgow Railway from 1862, later the N. B. R. 351 class (see below forNos. 351-6). It had the same double frames with outside cranks, the unusual coupledwheelbase of 7’ 10”, the abnormally long eccentric rods to the valve gear, and the mostunusual feature of the reversing lever being squeezed between the driving wheels and theouter splasher plates. However, the outside frames followed a different pattern and werespaced slightly differently from the 351 class. In this case the locomotive was left-handdrive, whereas the E & G engines were right-hand drive.

This drawing is based on the General Arrangement of the rebuild, as below, with the boilerand superstructure inferred from the fine photograph taken by A. E. Lockyer at Cowlairs inthe 1890s shortly before the rebuilding and from “working back” from the GA drawing. Thetender as shown here derived originally from a Stephenson and Co. 0-6-0 of the early1860s, much rebuilt by Drummond, and was towed behind No. 38 before its 1893 recon-struction and for some years afterwards. Several older engines had tenders based on theStephenson goods engine tender frames. Its dimensions have been estimated based onevidence from the N. B. R. diagram book.

North British Railway

Locomotive CAD Drawings

by Euan Cameron

EXPANDED CAPTIONS

This document contains expanded captions to the NBR locomotive drawingsproduced by Euan Cameron. Please use the bookmarks to navigate to eachcaption page.

Revised 23 March 2007

nbr038_Holmes_rebuild_dwg

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Engine wheelbase 7’ 6” + 7’ 10”: wheels 3’ 8” + 6’ 1”

In 1893 Holmes evidently considered 38 to be worth a separate rebuild closely similar tothat of the 351 class, sharing the same boiler but with other design details worked out sep-arately. The result was an extremely robust and powerful 2-4-0 which achieved some levelof renown on Clyde coast commuter trains. It also worked elsewhere over much of the N.B. R. system.

The drawing here is based closely on the Cowlairs Works General Arrangement preparedfor the 1893 rebuild (No. 1216B). However, the Cowlairs drawing gives only limited infor-mation about the outside frames, and a degree of conjecture is involved here. Some timeafter rebuilding 38 was equipped with a standard Wheatley 1,800 gallon six-wheeled ten-der, despite the mismatch between the running-plate heights of the locomotive and tender,and worked with this appendage for many years.

nbr039_rebuild_Holmes_livery_detailed_c_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 0” + 7’ 3”: wheels 5’ 1¾”

Thomas Wheatley’s 0-6-0ST saddletanks form a most complicated and confusing series oflocomotives, with at least six distinct classes and variations within several of them as todetails. No. 39 was an example of the most numerous class of engines with 5’ 1¾” drivingwheels, built between 1871 and 1873. The engines were numbered 39, 51, 62, 113, 136,149, 221-2, 229-30, 255-6, 261, 405-6 although not built in numerical order. Most took thenumbers of earlier engines that had been scrapped: only 405-6 were charged to capital.

In their original form these saddletanks echoed John Ramsbottom’s designs for the LNWR,with plain inside frames, saddle tanks over the boiler barrel stopping short at the rear of thesmokebox, and weatherboards fore and aft with no cab roof.

Holmes’s rebuildings gave the engines new tanks and platework, with a softer line than beforebut the same basic design principles. The new boilers had the dome set further back thanthe originals but were otherwise of more or less the same dimensions. Some degree ofstandardization took place at rebuilding: the boiler used on the 39 class was alsoused, for example, on rebuilds of the Beyer, Peacock 2-2-2s, 2-4-0s and 0-4-2s and onsome of Wheatley’s smaller goods 0-6-0s.

The drawing here is based on the Cowlairs General Arrangement for the rebuild of No. 39,drawing No. 1386B. This shows the first rebuildings of two members of the class in 1895.Subsequent rebuildings of other examples exhibited slight variations as to the cab andsplasher combination and the cab footsteps.

These engines were long-lived, and one lasted to be class J81 of the L. N. E. R. The inde-fatigable raconteur Norman McKillop (“Toram Beg”) described his early years as a youngcleaner-fireman working to an old driver called Andrew Manzie on No. 39 in Haymarketgoods yard around 1910 in his book Enginemen Elite. Prior to that 39 had been one of thepilot engines at Haymarket west end before the advent of the Holmes 795 class 0-6-0Ts.

nbr055_1867_rebuild_Drummond_livery_2c_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 9”: wheels 4’ 6”, 6’ 1½”, 3’ 9”

This unique and surprisingly successful 2-2-2 was constructed under Thomas Wheatley’ssuperintendency at St Margaret’s Works, Edinburgh and completed in August 1867. It in-herited the number of, and employed some parts from, the original N. B. R. No. 55, aCrampton 2-2-2-0 built by E. B. Wilson and Co., makers of the famous ‘Jenny Lind’, sometwo decades earlier. Notably, the 1867 rebuild included the carrying wheels and the dis-tinctive carrying wheel springs of the Wilson original. It also had Allan straight-link valvegear, which was most unusual on the N. B. R. and may have been derived from the origi-nal Crampton. Like many of the earlier N. B. locomotives it was driven from the right-handside.

The drawing here shows the engine as in the early 1890s and in Drummond livery. Thetender is one of Wheatley’s small wooden-framed four-wheelers, which were used exten-sively on older engines and varied considerably in dimensions, wheel diameter and manyother details. The locomotive drawing is based on the official drawing of the rebuild, as de-scribed below, with the boiler and superstructure reconstructed from photographs. The ten-der is estimated.

nbr055_final_rebuild_as_1009_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 9”: wheels 4’ 6”, 6’ 1½”, 3’ 9”

This drawing shows No. 55 after it received a further rebuilding (really a reboilering) in1897. It received a Drummond boiler probably of 1877 vintage (the date given on the worksplate) and a Holmes cab. It retained however the decorative paddlebox driving wheelsplasher from the 1867 rebuilding and other details such as the sandboxes as wellas the mainframes and valve gear. A new iron-framed tender, as shown here, replaced theancient wooden-framed four-wheel original. This replacement tender came from a Dübs &Co. 2-4-0 of the 341 class, dating from 1865 and recently scrapped. The engine was re-numbered as 1009 on the duplicate list in 1901.

No. 55 was reputed to be very fast, and must have been popular and successful enough tobe worth rebuilding at such a great age. It ran until c. 1909 especially in west Fife and toPerth. The drawing here is derived from a Cowlairs official drawing of the 1897 rebuild (No.183B) and the official works drawing of the Dübs tender, order No. 32T, slightly altered.

nbr070_Drummond_livery_dwg



It is an almost futile exercise to try to discern a “standard” pattern to Thomas Wheatley’s 880-6-0 goods engines with 5’ 1¾” driving wheels. Two similar but slightly divergent contractbuilders’ designs, 12 by Neilsons & Co. and 15 by Dübs & Co. respectively, started off theseries in 1868-9; the remainder were built at Cowlairs in stages over the remaining years ofWheatley’s superintendency.

The Cowlairs engines had slotted frames similar but not identical to the contractor-built de-signs; the early ones had box splashers to the lower part of the cab, and some had leadingand driving wheel slotted splashers apparently purloined from William Hurst 0-4-2Ts.

By the 1873-5 period something almost like standardization crept in. The splashers weresolid, the boilers were 10’ 1” long in the barrel and 5’ 5” in the firebox, and the cabs had arounded cutaway and a bent-over short roof as on the 2-4-0s and 4-4-0s built at the sameperiod.

No. 70, one of the 1874 examples, is shown here to demonstrate this later version of theWheatley goods engine. The frames and splashers are taken from the Cowlairs GA of theHolmes rebuilds, Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 716B for the locomotive (as de-scribed below for No. 283 below) and No. 213B for the tender. The superstructure is re-constructed from other evidence.

The livery is the Drummond livery with dark olive green, black bands and red lining as de-scribed in Mr. Allan Rodgers’s article on the subject and shown in a contemporary photo-graph of No. 70.

nbr141_164_original_Drummond_cab_livery_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 5” + 7’ 7”: wheels 4’ 0” and 6’ 6”

In 1869 Thomas Wheatley designed his first two entirely conventional 2-4-0s, with insideframes throughout and the then unusually large coupled wheel diameter of 6’ 6”. In theiroriginal form the engines had the typical Cowlairs boiler of the 1860s, domeless with asquare-based safety-valve trumpet over the firebox, usually with a 10’ 2” barrel and a 5’ 0”long firebox. The minimal concessions to elegance of design lay mostly in the paddleboxsplashers over the driving wheelset. These engines showed some resemblance to JohnRamsbottom’s Newton class 2-4-0s of 1866 onwards, which also had 6’ 6” coupled wheelsand paddlebox splashers.

In their original form these engines had box rear splashers and a plain bent-over weather-board, as seen on this site on No. 38 and on many other early Wheatley engines. 141 hadhinged side-flaps fitted relatively early on. 164, as shown here, was given a hybrid Wheat-ley-cum-Drummond style of cab similar but not identical to that fitted to 4-4-0 No. 224 be-tween 1880 and 1885 and to 264 from the 1880s until 1893. This cab is attested by aphotograph in the A. G. Ellis collection showing 164 at Haymarket shed in the 1880s and inDrummond livery. Like many of the earlier engines, it had no brake gear on the locomotiveeven though the Westinghouse brake system was fitted for tender and train.

The drawing here is based on Cowlairs general arrangement No. 1077B, the official andvery detailed General Arrangement for the rebuilding of this class, as described below. Thesuperstructure has been re-created from photographs.

nbr141_rebuild_Holmes_livery_dwg



Holmes rebuilt both 141 and 164 around 1890/1. The rebuilding followed Holmes’s by nowstandard pattern and created a well-balanced and elegant design, if a little more top-heavythan some of the others.

The drawing here is based on Cowlairs general arrangement No. 1077B, the official andvery detailed General Arrangement for the rebuilding of this class. Unfortunately like someothers it contains inconsistencies between the lines drawn on the sheet and the dimen-sions written over them; resolving these internal contradictions is not a precise science.Note also that this drawing shows the smaller Wheatley pattern of tender with a 4’ 8” + 4’ 8”wheelbase rather than the 5’ 2” + 5’ 2” found on the larger examples. These smaller ten-ders were not nearly as common as the diagram books sometimes suggest, and were of-ten exchanged for the larger variety as passenger engines with longer runs required morewater capacity than originally provided for.



Engine wheelbase 7’ 1” + 6’ 8”, wheels 5’ 1¾”

Between 1865 and 1867 the North British Railway took delivery of 36 nearly identical 0-6-0s from the newly-founded Glasgow Locomotive works of Henry Dübs. Dübs set up incompetition to his former masters at Neilson & Co., and to judge from the resemblancebetween early Dübs engines and Neilson products of a few years earlier, must have takensheaves of working drawings from the Neilson drawing office when he set up his own con-cern.

The 185 class somewhat resembled two much less numerous classes of 0-6-0s built byHawthorns of Leith and Robert Stephenson & Co. in the early 1860s. These should nothowever be called “Hurst engines” after the contemporary N. B. R. locomotive superintend-ent, because this is an anachronism. Before the time of Stroudley and Drummond, contractbuilders retained considerable latitude to impose their own design styles and details on thecommissions they received from railway companies. In any case, Hurst could only orderlocomotives on the permission of the appropriate committee of the Board.

The original engines had parallel boilers with large bell-mouthed domes in the Beyer, Pea-cock manner and a raised firebox. They had box splashers over the trailing wheels and abent-over weatherboard. The chimneys had copper caps and parallel sides. (A drawing ofthis form is in process.)

This drawing shows one of the engines, No. 207, as rebuilt by Matthew Holmes in 1892.Both Drummond and Holmes had taken hands in rebuilding the class. Both kinds of re-builds had boilers of the same barrel and firebox dimensions as the originals, except thatthe raised firebox was dispensed with. Round cabs were fitted. Drummond’s rebuilds didnot have brake gear, whereas Holmes’s had brake shoes on the engine. Many of the Hol-mes rebuilds had Westinghouse brake to make them suitable for mixed traffic on local andbranch lines. No. 207 was used on the Montrose and Bervie railway, a windy branch line inAngus that had originally been worked by the Caledonian before the N. B. took over itsrunning.

This drawing is based on the Dübs original general arrangements for the design as firstbuilt, order numbers 38E and 38T, with the rebuilding details derived from the diagram booksand photographs. The sharp-eyed may notice that the running plates of engine andtender do not match up exactly. That is how the engines were designed. Differentdraughtsmen worked on engine and tender, and imposed different frame heights on thetwo halves of the locomotive.

nbr213_original_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 3”: wheels 3’ 6”, 6’ 6”, 3’ 6”

This drawing shows one of the most successful, and in some respects innovative, designsto appear on a Scottish railway in the 1850s. The Edinburgh and Glasgow railway made thebold decision to order some 2-2-2 express locomotives from the newly-formed company ofBeyer, Peacock and Co. of Gorton works, Manchester in 1855. The first six engines weredelivered in 1856.

Charles Beyer, an immigrant engineer from Saxony in Germany, had perceived that thechief problem afflicting the first generation of steam locomotives was the feebleness of theframes, aggravated by the inability of the conventional Stephenson / Hawthorn designs tomake appropriate allowance for the fact that the boiler expanded more than the main-frames during normal operation of a steam locomotive. The engines of the 1840s and early1850s, including those on the Scottish railways, literally pulled themselves to pieces be-cause of this basic design defect. Beyer saw the need to use full-length plate frames run-ning from buffer-beam to drag-box, with the smokebox and cylinders firmly anchored at thefront end and allowed to slide on expansion brackets at the rear. He had the advantage thatmetallurgy had progressed since the first locomotive designs were worked out in the 1830s,allowing more solid and longer iron plates to be produced.

With this basic engineering principle worked out, Beyer was able to produce 2-2-2s, 2-4-0s, 0-4-2s, and 0-6-0s with a great variety of frame configurations. All his designs for theE&GR, however, had mixed frames, with the carrying wheels on outside axle-boxes andthe driving wheels on inside bearings. As can be seen, Beyer believed in a degree of orna-mentation but also in simplicity of line. The Beyer, Peacock singles were elegantly andeconomically laid out, with inside cylinders and launch-type link motion valve gear. Thetenders echoed the design principles of the locomotives.

This drawing is based on the surviving original Beyer, Peacock General Arrangementdrawings, order numbers 66 and 67 for engine and tender respectively. The livery is con-jectured based on the works photograph of E&GR No. 23 taken at Gorton Works in 1856.

nbr213_Wheatley_rbd_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 3”: wheels 3’ 6”, 6’ 6”, 3’ 6”

The Beyer, Peacock singles were destined to have very long lives, exceeding 50 years inpassenger service. By the time the last example was withdrawn they were almost absurdlysmall for contemporary traffic.

During their existence several were rebuilt in a variety of interesting ways. The most fa-mous rebuildings were those initiated by Drummond in 1880 and completed by Holmes (adrawing of these is in process). However, this drawing shows an interesting and uniquevariant, Wheatley’s rebuild of No. 213 from 1875.

Wheatley gave the engine a new boiler, a cut-down version of Wheatley’s standard boilerwith large dome and stovepipe chimney. At one stage this engine had a large brass bell-mouthed dome from a Stephenson 0-6-0, but later was fitted with a more typical Wheatleyopen-topped dome as shown here. Rather oddly the pitch of the boiler was slightly loweredfrom the original, about an inch lower than the 6’ 7½” of Beyer’s design.

The drawing, based on the same sources as the previous one, shows the locomotive asrunning in the mid-1890s. As first rebuilt the engine had no brakes on the locomotive; thenDrummond fitted Westinghouse for tender and train only; finally around 1893 Holmes fittedbrake shoes to the engine linked to the air brake system.

The locomotive remained in this form until Holmes rebuilt it to more or less the 1880 Drum-mond pattern in 1897. By that time it was unusual, certainly among express passenger en-gines, in still having essentially a Wheatley profile.

nbr224_1885_rebuild_Nisbet_Compound_dwg


The notorious Tay Bridge “diver” was first built, along with its twin No. 264, as a modifica-tion of the Wheatley 2-4-0 with a leading Adams bogie, and its original form is shown in thedrawing of No. 264 below.

This drawing shows a most interesting and somewhat bizarre experiment in which Mat-thew Holmes indulged relatively early in his superintendency. A relative of his called W. H.Nisbet had patented a system of tandem compounding for steam locomotives, using twosets of Joy valve gear operating from shared bearings on the locomotive connecting rods.The point of the system seems to have been to allow the driver to use high-pressure steamexpansively in the small high-pressure cylinders while allowing a relatively late cut-off in thelow-pressure, larger cylinders sharing the same piston rod.

The tandem compound experiment was tried uniquely on No. 224 for two years from 1885.The high-pressure cylinders were housed over the leading bogie wheel between 12” longforward extensions of the mainframes. To allow for the upward angular motion of the Joygear valve rod, the 4’ 0” boiler was pitched high, at 7’ 5½” from rail level, but of the sameoverall dimensions as the Wheatley original. Unlike most of Holmes’s boilers of this type,this boiler had seven additional longitudinal stays, which reduced the heating surface butincreased the rigidity. This suggests that the boiler was intended to run at higher than usu-al pressure, though no documentary evidence to this effect has been found.

The result must have been a very front-heavy, underboilered engine with too much cylin-der capacity to evaporative surface, which was also uncommonly complicated to drive.While the experiment was reported as a success in the engineering press, within two yearsthe engine had been radically simpled / simplified by the elimination of the front cylinders.The engine ran with two cylinders, its high, small boiler and Joy’s valve gear until a furtherrebuilding in 1897 (below).

The drawing is based on the Cowlairs 1885 General Arrangement, drawing No. 847B, sup-plemented by information about the design from the contemporary engineering press.

nbr224_1897_rebuild_larger_tender_c_dwg


In 1897 Matthew Holmes rebuilt No. 224 for a fourth and final time. On this occasion theengine was restored to the sort of unambitious simplicity already achieved with the 2-4-0sand No. 264. New 17” x 24” cylinders were fitted, and a boiler identical to that alreadyfound on 264, 141, 164, and the 418 class 2-4-0s (below). The extended mainframes andrather short, minimal arched cab were retained from the 1885 rebuilding, as was an extra-large “piano cover” in front of the smokebox dating from the “simpling” of the engine in1887. The original short-wheelbased Wheatley tender was replaced with one of the largerdesign with a foot longer wheelbase.

In this form 224 served for another 22 years, being eventually withdrawn in 1919. Thisdrawing is derived from the sources listed above, with additional data from diagram booksand General Arrangements of other Wheatley rebuilt designs.

nbr228_Holmes_rebuild_c_dwg



Wheatley’s first large 0-6-0ST locomotives were Nos. 226 and 228, built in 1870. Theframes and motion of the large Cowlairs goods engine of the period were married to theboiler of the big-wheeled 2-4-0s. A small dome was located over the firebox as on 224 and264, built the following year. A saddletank covered the whole boiler, and the overall effectwas closely akin to the Ramsbottom L&NWR 0-6-0STs except for the larger wheels.

Holmes rebuilt No. 228 in 1901 to the form shown here. The rebuild followed the patternseen on all the other Wheatley tanks of the same period. As rebuilt No. 228 lasted longerthan all the other locomotives of this type. The London and North Eastern Railway classedit as ‘J86’ among the small-wheeled tanks, apparently thinking that it had smaller wheelsthan it actually did. The same company finally withdrew it in October 1924.

This drawing is based on Holmes’s General Arrangement for the rebuilding, Cowlairsdrawing No. 82B.

nbr237_Drummond_rebuild_dwg



Between 1859 and 1862 the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway took delivery from Beyer,Peacock and Co. of four 2-4-0s with the same boiler design as the last two 2-2-2s andtwelve 0-4-2s ordered from the same company. Unlike the six 2-2-2s of 1856, these en-gines had large bell-mouthed brass domes over the fireboxes with Salter safety valves ontop. All the designs were of the mixed-frame type with carrying wheels located in outsidebearings on an external subframe assembly.

In 1881 Dugald Drummond began rebuilding the 2-4-0s along similar lines to his rebuilds ofthe 2-2-2s, begun the previous year. One of the first to be treated was No. 237, which hadbeen named ‘Alexandria’ in the Drummond phase of naming nearly every passengerengine where there was somewhere to paint a name.

The rebuild featured a boiler proportioned differently from the original. The Beyer, Peacockboilers had a barrel 10’ 1” long and a firebox 4’ 7” long. The Drummond replacementslengthened the firebox to 5’ 0” and shortened the barrel to 9’ 7”. Drummond fitted Westing-house brake equipment on the locomotives, but no brakes were fitted on the enginesthemselves until some years into the Holmes superintendency. The stroke of the cylinderswas lengthened from 20” to 22”, the bore of 16” remaining the same.

The platework included the round cab, a design style which Drummond had borrowed fromthe Stirling brothers on the G&SWR. In the case of the 2-4-0s the cab was wrapped rightaround the wheels and coupling rods, following the very broad box splashers of the originaldesign. The result was a cab that was almost exactly as broad as it was high, giving theengines an extremely squat, dumpy appearance.

Nevertheless these engines seem to have been quite successful and continued in use fornearly another three decades. 237 was photographed many times at Perth and elsewhere.

The drawing is based on Beyer, Peacock Order No. 379, the original General Arrangementfor this class. The rebuilt boiler and platework are deduced from the N. B. R. diagram booksand careful scrutiny of photographs. The tender is reconstructed from the diagram booksand the General Arrangement drawing of the tender of the 2-2-2s.

nbr264_original_Drummond_livery_dwg


Thomas Wheatley’s first 4-4-0s represented a fairly minimal adjustment from his 141 class2-4-0s, with the same coupled wheelbase, the same size driving wheels, and a very similarboiler. One change was that Wheatley very sensibly turned away from the Salter safetyvalve at this point. The E. & G. Cowlairs boiler of the 1860s, which Wheatley used on manyof his rebuilds of older locomotives and on his earliest 2-4-0s and 0-6-0s, had Salter valvesexhausting steam through an elegant brass inverted trumpet. These safety valves were fartoo easy to tamper with, especially when the springs were actually located in the cab on theboiler backhead as in this case, and Wheatley began to strip them out and re- place themwith a fully enclosed spring-loaded valve. 224 and 264 received a very small done over thefirebox in the original position of the Salter valve cover, with the new spring- loaded valvesenclosed in the top.

The drawing is based on the Cowlairs 1885 General Arrangement of 224, Drawing No.847B, for the frames. The boiler dimensions and pitch are recorded in contemporary re-ports from the 1870s. The platework is inferred from photographs and Wheatley’s normalpractice. The small weatherboard above the handrail is shown in an early photograph of264, although the engine received a slightly larger top section to the cab in the 1880s. Thelivery follows the Drummond style as seen in the same early photograph.

nbr264_rebuild_Holmes_livery_2c_dwg


The rebuildings of the first Wheatley 4-4-0, No. 224, were several and complex (seeabove). There is much less mystery about 224’s twin, No. 264. This engine remained in

and the usual platework. It is probable that the trailing plate springs were replaced with coilsprings, but that change is not recorded on any of the drawings of Wheatley rebuilds, soplate springs are shown here throughout.

264 was associated for many years with the Waverley route and in particular with the Bor-der counties line from Riccarton to near Hexham via Reedsmouth. This difficult and de-manding route through beautiful Northumberland countryside attracted a variety of elderlylocomotives, including the Beyer, Peacock engines 2-2-2 No. 215 and 0-4-2 No. 325. Bor-der counties trains worked through to Newcastle General station via running powers overthe North Eastern. In rebuilt condition 264 was attached to the larger Wheatley tender. Inlater years it also had front footsteps fitted over the rear bogie wheels.

The drawing is based on the Cowlairs General Arrangement of 224, Drawing No. 847B, forthe frames and basic platework, supplemented by photographs and drawings of otherWheatley rebuilds. The tender drawing is based on Cowlairs General Arrangement No.213B.

nbr283_rebuild_dwg



Matthew Holmes did his best to bring some order into a confused state of affairs when the

10’ 1” barrel and 5’ 5” long firebox, a standard component used for Holmes’s 0-6-0s, 4-4-0s, 0-4-4Ts and 0-6-0Ts with 17” diameter cylinders, as well as for the larger of the Wheat-ley rebuilds. A new cab was fitted, although in most cases the original leading and drivingwheel splashers were retained. Some of the engines were Westinghouse fitted, while mosthad only steam brakes and the tender handbrake.

The drawing here shows No. 283 as rebuilt in 1889. It is derived from Cowlairs GeneralArrangement No. 716B for the locomotive, and No. 213B for the tender as described above.Noteworthy are the cast centres to the wheels with T-section spokes, an economydevice to which Wheatley resorted for many of his new engines intended for slow traffic.Somewhat surprisingly to modern eyes, no provision was made for balancing the wheelsexcept for the opposing of the inside and outside cranks on each side. These wheel cen-tres were somewhat prone to cracking, and the older wrought-iron wheels in several casesproved more durable.

An archival drawing exists for the final rebuild of this class in Reid’s time, and this will beadded to the collection in due course.

nbr351_Drummond_rebuild_Holmes_livery_dwg



William Steel Brown, a trainee of Archibald Sturrock from the G. N. R. at Doncaster, head-ed the Cowlairs works engineering team during a particularly exciting period in the early1860s. In those years a formidable array of talent worked for the E. & G. R., including Wil-liam Stroudley, Dugald Drummond and Samuel Waite Johnson. Brown was chiefly, thoughperhaps not exclusively, responsible for the first really successful passenger locomotives tobe built at Cowlairs works. These robust double-framed 2-4-0s arrived from 1862 on-wards, with 6’ 0” driving wheels and 4’ 0” carrying wheels and domeless boilers. A numberof their details echoed Sturrock’s Doncaster practice: they quite closely resembled some ofSturrock’s 2-2-2s and also a class of 2-4-0s, curiously built after the E&GR examples. In N.B. R. days the eight engines in the class were numbered 349-356, although No. 351 wasthe first to be built.

There is no truth in the often repeated story that these locomotives ran with unlagged boil-ers in their early careers. It presumably derives from the fact that a works photo was takenin ‘shop grey’ of the first of them, E. & G. R. No. 101 (later N. B. R. 351) before it was com-plete. This photograph indeed shows the boiler without lagging, but also (for example)shows the engine without a tender or a safety-valve cover. There can be no doubt that theboilers were safely lagged and cleaded when the engines entered service.

This drawing shows the first of the class, No. 351, as rebuilt by Drummond in 1882. Thisrebuild preserved much of the original, including the frames and pierced splashers, andprobably used the original boiler shell at the original pitch. However, Drummond boiler fit-tings were added and a round cab roof. In the Holmes period the engine received veryshort brake levers and shoes between the driving wheels.

The source for the locomotive drawing is the Cowlairs official rebuilding General Arrange-ment for No. 356 (No. 982B), heavily interpreted and amended with the aid of a goodbroadside photograph of the engine. No official general arrangement survives for the SteelBrown tender. In this case the evidence of the diagram books has been eked out with pho-tographs.

nbr354_first_rebuilding_dwg



This drawing shows an interesting rebuild of one of the first batch, N. B. R. No. 354, for-merly E. & G. R. No. 104 built in 1863. This engine was one of two rebuilt c. 1882, aroundthe very end of Drummond’s time or the very beginning of Holmes’s. The rebuild involvedreorganizing the boiler fittings (probably on the original shell) and fitting a unique cab whichcombined aspects of Drummond and Stirling practice. This engine worked out of Dundeeand was apparently extremely successful. Although fitted with Westinghouse brake, thelocomotive had no brake gear on the engine itself until its second rebuilding.

One feature of these early 2-4-0s that cannot easily be rendered on a drawing is that theenginemen in the sheds tended to adjust the springs to as to hoist the engines up on theirleading wheels, to increase the load and therefore the grip of the first pair of wheels on thetrack and lessen the risk of derailment. Many 2-4-0s therefore appear in contemporaryphotographs in a sort of “sit-up-and beg” posture. It can have done nothing for the factor ofadhesion but may have saved a few accidents.

The sources for this drawing are the same as those for the drawings of 351 and of 354’ssecond rebuilding, amplified by careful scrutiny of photographs.

nbr354_second_rebuilding_dwg



Matthew Holmes laid down a design in 1886 for rebuilding No. 356, one of the secondbatch of Steel Brown 2-4-0s completed under Samuel Johnson, and the rest of the 2-4-0swere gradually rebuilt to this design. In 1897 No. 354 was rebuilt from its Drummond ap-pearance to resemble the rest of the class.

The boiler on these engines was a ‘standard’ designed by Holmes for a number of his re-

long. It was used not only on the 351 class 2-4-0s but also on the final rebuilds ofWheatley’s 4-4-0s 224 and 264, on the Wheatley 2-4-0s of the 141 and 418 class, and onthe unique Wheatley double-framed 2-4-0 No. 38 (q.v.). In the case of the double-framedlocomotive there were no inside bearings to the trailing drivers, so the firebox could beplaced far back, just clearing the trailing axle but no more. Since the cab front spectacleplate was set as a rule no more than c. 5½” in front of the firebox backhead, in this casethe result was an unusually short and compact space for the crew. These locomotives wereright-hand drive throughout their existence, with the additional peculiarity that the reach-rodfor the reversing gear was run down the narrow space between the outside of the wheelsand the inside of the coupled wheel splashers.

The source for the locomotive drawing is the Cowlairs official rebuilding General Arrange-ment for No. 356 (No. 982B). This drawing is a prime example of the principle that a worksdrawing does not solve all puzzles. It is one of the most problematic documents to survivefrom the Cowlairs drawing office: inconsistencies and internal contradictions abound. Thedrawing is therefore here offered as a best effort to resolve those contradictions in a wayconsistent with the photographic as well as the documentary evidence.

nbr356_Holmes_rebuild_Johnson_tender_dwg



This drawing represents No. 356, one of the last of the Steel Brown – Johnson 2-4-0s tobe built and the first to receive the full Matthew Holmes rebuilding treatment.

The S. W. Johnson 2-4-0s had some minor differences from the original four, chiefly in de-tails such as the profile of the rear footsteps. The most significant difference, however, wasin the tenders. The first four Steel Brown engines had tenders styled after the Beyer, Pea-cock type, but with 4’ 0” wheels matching the front carrying wheels of the locomotive. Sincethe top of the frame was only at 3’ 10” from rail level, this entailed a complicatedconstruction of the water tank with internal ‘splashers’ to accommodate the wheels. John-son greatly simplified the design: he gave the tenders smaller wheels, a simpler, longer andslightly lower water tank, and mainframes that were deeper and more solid than the originalversion. These frames rather copied Neilson practice than Beyer, Peacock.

This drawing has been derived from the same sources as the others of this class. The liv-ery shown is the early Holmes style that was applied when 356 was first rebuilt. In lateryears 356 was paired with a large Wheatley six-wheeled tender, reputedly to work trainsaround the Fife coast that required a greater water capacity.

nbr358_final_rebuild_as_1011_c_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 6”, wheels 4’ 3”

This drawing shows the final rebuilding of two rather bizarrely celebrated locomotives, Tho-mas Wheatley’s 0-4-0 tender engines Nos. 357 and 358. They probably owe their celebrityto the fact that they lasted to a later date in main line service than any other 0-4-0 tenderengines in Britain (at least until the resurrection of Sharp, Stewart 0-4-0 Furness RailwayNo. 20 in the preservation era!) The North British Railway had a range of four-wheelers,mostly inherited from other concerns or sometimes even from private owners. The twoWheatleys were the last to be built to this archaic design and the last to remain in service.

These engines were built in 1868 out of miscellaneous retrieved materials. They had a 7’ 6”wheelbase and deeply slotted mainframes, with wheels of approximately 5’ 1” diameter. Asfirst built they had domeless boilers with raised fireboxes and flared safety-valve trum- petsover the firebox. They had basic vertical weatherboards with no roof of any kind. They hadthe crude Wheatley wooden-framed tender.

Matthew Holmes carried out a fairly thorough rebuild of 357 and 358 in 1899 and 1902 re-spectively. The wheel diameter was set at 5’ 1”, and the engines were given a new Holmesboiler at 6’ 8” pitch with the usual fittings, including a small chimney, the usual dome withsafety valves, and conventional non-lifting injectors. The box lower section to the cab wasretained, but a long bent-over weatherboard, probably taken from a Dübs and Co. 0-6-0,was set on top. Each engine received a new iron-framed tender although these were not ofthe same pattern. That on 357 came from a Stephensons 0-6-0, while 358’s appears tohave been purloined off a Neilson 90 class 2-4-0. In each case a new tank was fitted andthe tender frames were rearranged to have the hornblocks and springs outside rather thaninside the frames.

In 1911 W. P. Reid somewhat peculiarly decided to extend the life of these oddities stillfurther. However, the final ‘rebuilding’ was actually less drastic than appears. The mostdramatic visual change was that the driving wheels were replaced with Wheatley cast-ironwheels of 4’ 3” diameter. (Incidentally, these were not the only four-wheelers to be rebuilt inthis way.) This change lowered the frames and boiler by 5” overall, and required thebufferbeam to be re-sited higher up and weighshaft balance weight to be altered. Thehandbrake formerly fitted on the engine was replaced with a steam brake cylinder underthe footplate. The boiler was unchanged. A diminutive cab, styled after the Reid side-win-dow roofed cab but obviously without windows, was fitted in place of the old weather-boards. To match the lowering of the engine, the tender wheels were replaced with newones of a much smaller diameter.

357 and 358, already on the duplicate list, had meanwhile been renumbered 810/11 in1895 and 1010/11 in 1901. 1011 lasted to be inherited by the L. N. E. R., in N. B. R. linedblack livery with its number in control numerals painted on the tender. In this form it waswithdrawn late in 1925.

The drawing is based on Reid’s General Arrangement drawing for the rebuild of these twoengines, Cowlairs drawing No. 3709B. The tender is based on Neilsons’ drawing of the 90class tender, much revised in the light of photographic evidence.

nbr382_original_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 9”: wheels 3’ 11½” and 6’ 0½”

The Neilson 382 class 2-4-0s were a successful and (by N. B. R. standards) fairly largeclass of passenger locomotives, comprising twelve examples, and had a long life. Theywere the third series of a sequence of mixed-frame 2-4-0s with outside bearings to theleading wheels and inside bearings to the drivers, of which the first six had been deliveredby Neilson & Co. to the N. B. R. in 1861. Contrary to what is often reported, all three 2-4-0classes, these and the very similar six Dübs & Co. 2-4-0s of the 341 class had the sameengine wheelbase of 7’ 3” + 7’ 9”: this is proven by consultation of the original works draw-ings for each, all of which have survived. The 1865 Dübs engines were in fact so similar inconstructional details to the 1861 Neilsons that it is tempting to assume that Henry Dübs setup his new firm with some of the designers and even some of the patterns and draw- ingstaken over from Neilsons. The 382 class of 1866-7 were rather different in many re- spectsfrom their predecessors, most obviously in the domeless boiler and a curve to the outsideframes that was more elliptical and flowing than on the earlier deliveries. All the maincomponents were redesigned within the overall framework of the same size andspecification of locomotive. The boilers were 10’ 0” long in the barrel and 5’ 0” long in thefirebox. The driving wheel springs were equalized. There were various minor detail varia-tions between the first four and the last eight of the class. The drawing here is accurate forNos. 382-5.

One feature that cannot be shown on this drawing is a very large horizontal injector fitted tothe first four of the 382 class on the right hand side of the boiler only. The remainder al- sohad a single injector on the right hand side, but set vertically. The reversing gear was alsosituated on the right hand side of the locomotive. These locomotives suffered a variety ofdetail changes during the Wheatley and Drummond years but worked well enough to earn acomprehensive rebuilding from Holmes, with individual locomotives being treated atintervals between 1888 and 1892. (There was only one rebuilding process, not two as issometimes implied.)

The drawing here is based on official Neilsons drawings for both the engine and tender.The livery is somewhat conjectural, but the lining pattern closely follows the works photo-graph of No. 382. Note that N. B. R. engines ordered new during William Hurst’s superin-tendency did not carry cast numberplates. In some cases at least the numbers werepainted on to the cab sides.

nbr382_rebuild_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 9”: wheels 3’ 11½” and 6’ 0½”

The Holmes rebuilding of the Neilson 2-4-0s, executed between 1888 and 1892, produceda particularly elegant and well proportioned locomotive. Only the third and last series ofengines received this treatment: the 1861 and 1865 locomotives were withdrawn in the1890s in their original form or as modified by Wheatley. To the 382s Holmes fitted a smallboiler, unlike that of any other class, air brakes throughout, and his usual pattern of cab. Inthis form they worked all over the system on local trains almost until the eve of the FirstWorld War.

By a curious accident one of these engines was featured on an early piece of cine film tak-en in 1898. An early experimenter with film ran a camera across the Tay Bridge on a flatwagon pushed by a Drummond tank engine. The resulting footage showed two south-bound trains passing the camera: the second was hauled by a brand new 729 class 4-4-0,but the first was a Tayport local hauled by a little Neilson rebuild, probably No. 383. (Theremainder of the film showed Esplanade Station, then a Holmes 4-4-0, a Wheatley 0-6-0and an ‘Abbotsford’ in Dundee yard. An edited version of this film, omitting the first part withthe 2-4-0, can be seen on http://youtube.com/watch?v=o0n09P969fw.)

This drawing is based on the sources for the drawing of the original design, supplementedwith the diagram book sketch of the rebuilds and careful reference to photographs. Thelivery follows the early Holmes pattern with dark red outside frames, but with the darkerbody colour that was becoming current c. 1890. This colour scheme has been derived fromcareful examination of a photograph of 382 taken soon after rebuilding.

nbr418_425_early_Wheatley_livery_dwg



By 1873 Thomas Wheatley had arrived at something like a consistent style, and built arange of locomotives all with inside frames, sharing similar components and design details.These were chiefly goods 0-6-0s with 4’ 3” or 5’ 1¾” wheels, but also included eight 2-4-0sand four 4-4-0s. The eight 2-4-0s of the 418 class had 6’ 0” driving wheels and a boilercommon with the smaller goods engines. The large dome enclosing the safety valves andthe cab with its minimal top section followed Wheatley’s by now standard pattern. Thisdrawing shows one of the class in Drummond livery with olive body colour and dark redvalances, certain Drummond details such as the lamp-irons and tallow cups, and the reser-voir for the Westinghouse brake system. After the Westinghouse brake was adopted asstandard after the 1876 brake trials, many earlier locomotives were not fitted with brakeshoes even though they had air brake equipment for the train and tender.

This drawing shows the Wheatley livery and omits all power brake equipment. This reflectsthe first appearance of the class as built in 1873. The livery is based on a detailed photo-graph of No. 418 taken when it was briefly fitted with the Smith non-automatic vacuumbrake for comparative tests in the 1870s. As first built the engines had no automatic brakeof any kind.

The drawing is based on the sources listed below for the rebuild of 426, supplemented bycareful scrutiny of photographs.

nbr418_425_original_Drummond_livery_dwg



This drawing shows one of the class in Drummond livery with olive body colour and darkred valances, certain Drummond details such as the lamp-irons and tallow cups, and thereservoir for the Westinghouse brake system. After the Westinghouse brake was adoptedas standard after the 1876 brake trials, many earlier locomotives were not fitted with brakeshoes even though they had air brake equipment for the train and tender.

The drawing is based on the sources listed below for the rebuild of 426, supplemented bycareful scrutiny of photographs.

nbr420_as_built_421_first_livery_dwg.JPG

http://euankcameron.fotopic.net/p 35562649.html

In 1873 Wheatley designed his first four ‘production’ 4-4-0s, which shared the same boileras his large 0-6-0s. These represented a slight enlargement of 224 and 264, though retain-ing the same cylinder proportions. 420 to 423 were probably the very first N. B. R. enginesto be fitted with Westinghouse brakes, and the automatic brakes were showing their use-fulness on the Waverley route trains even before the 1876 brake trials. The 420s worked onthe Waverley route in the first instance, although they proved unable to cope with the lengthand weight of the trains over Falahill and Whitrope banks without assistance. 421 served asthe model Westinghouse locomotive at the 1876 brake trials on the Edinburgh and Glasgowmain line. After being supplanted by the ‘Abbotsford’ 4-4-0s on the Waverley route theWheatley 420s worked mostly in the Forth and Clyde valleys, and had a long and highlycreditable career almost exclusively in express passenger service.

This drawing shows one of the class in the original Wheatley green livery, just after theWestinghouse brake equipment was added early in 1876.

The drawing is based on the sources for the rebuild of No. 420 as below, supplemented bythe very rare and sparse photographic evidence for this class.



420 ran from 1873 to 1887 before being rebuilt, and it is fairly certain that like others of theclass it was repainted in Drummond livery before being rebuilt. This drawing shows it as itwould have appeared just before rebuilding. It is based on the same sources as the others.



Between 1887 and 1890 Holmes rebuilt all four 420s, and as rebuilt they served until theFirst World War for much of that time on main line passenger service. This drawing shows420 just after rebuilding. The geometry of the cab and other platework was standard withthe rebuildings of the other Wheatley engines built with 6’ 6” wheels. Like the others, the420s had their nominal wheel diameter increased to 6’ 7” by the use of thicker steel tyres.

The drawing is based on Cowlairs drawing No. 815B, the arrangement produced for therebuilding of the class, which includes sufficient detail of the mainframes and other aspectsof the design carried forward from the original form. Note how the lining pattern of the mainbody panels is echoed on the coupling rod splashers and the front extensions to the main-frames.



Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 9”: wheels 4’ 2½” and 6’ 1”

usual details. This rebuilding once again produced an admirably balanced and well propor-tioned locomotive with all the power necessary for the small local trains of the period. Al-though not reported as such in the diagram books, all the 418s were normally fitted with thelarger size of Wheatley tender.

This drawing is based on Cowlairs General Arrangement Drawings 1193B for the locomo-tive and 213B for the tender. The livery is believed to be correct for 1890, just after the lo-comotive was rebuilt.

nbr426_Reid_rebuild_as_1247_late_livery_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 3” + 7’ 9”: wheels 4’ 2½” and 6’ 1”

The second rebuilding of six of the 418s to resemble the other Reid rebuilds in 1915, dur-ing the First World War, has become something of a legend. The resulting engines werepopular favourites, worked all over the local branches in the lowlands, and were widely andoften photographed.

Yet in fact what Reid planned for the 418 class 2-4-0s was exactly the same operation ashad already been performed for the much more numerous Wheatley 0-6-0 goods enginesfor some years. It had been discovered that the Wheatley goods engines were extremelysolidly built in the frames and valve gear, were fundamentally still sound, and were perfect-ly capable of sustaining a further renewal and of giving another decade or so of usefulservice. Reid therefore reboilered them with boilers of nearly identical proportions to the firstrebuilds, with more modern fittings, and left the rest of the locomotive pretty much alone.

The Cowlairs pipe arrangement of the 418 rebuild (drawing No. 4489B) shows that thesame process was actually intended in the case of the 2-4-0s. It shows a modern boilerwith combination injectors and dual brake equipment fitted to the 418 design as rebuilt byHolmes c. 1890, with the round cab and other platework quite unchanged. In the event Reiddecided, presumably quite late in the process, to have a miniature version of his side-window cab designed for these engines, duly made the subject of a part drawing (No.4509B) which also survives. This change also entailed fitting new sandboxes and the addi-tion of front footsteps.

These locomotives lasted well into the L. N. E. R. era in a variety of liveries, some lined-outand some not. The locomotive shown was in fact the last in service as L. N. E. R. No.10247, in lined black. It is here shown in the fully lined N. B. R. livery applied at the pointwhen it was rebuilt.

The sources for this drawing are Cowlairs drawings 4489B and 4509B as described above.

nbr430_second_rebuild_Holmes_livery_2c_dwg


Engine wheelbase 6’ 9” + 7’ 9”: wheels 4’ 3”

These Wheatley saddletanks were a curious anomaly, but a numerous and long-lived classof 20 locomotives. As built they constituted a class of small-wheeled 0-6-0s first built in1873, with boilers and cabs very similar to those of the Wheatley 418 class 2-4-0 (q.v.)

Around 1890 Matthew Holmes decided to convert the entire class into saddletanks. Theframes were slightly extended at the rear and provided with brakes, which had been ab-sent from the tender engines. New platework was provided, in the form of a tank similar tothat on Holmes’s other rebuilds of Wheatley tanks, and the same roofless cab weather-boards seen on other Wheatley 0-6-0STs.

However, rather strangely Holmes decided to leave the Wheatley boilers, which were lessthan 20 years old, alone. So in their first rebuilding the 430 saddletanks had stovepipechimneys, smokeboxes with snaphead rivets, and domes in the middle of the barrel ratherthan towards the rear as on Holmes boilers. The spring-loaded safety-valves formerly en-closed within the large Wheatley dome were allowed to exhaust through a space in thesmall dome enclosed with a elongated rounded metal surround where the lock-up safety-valves would normally have been.

Around ten years later the original boilers wore out. Since Holmes did not wish to replacethe saddletanks so recently fitted, unique boilers were designed for the class to fit the ex-isting tanks. These boilers had the usual Holmes fittings, but with the dome set on the mid-dle of the boiler as on a Wheatley engine.

The class proved to be quite useful as shunters. Before the construction of Holmes’s 795class 0-6-0Ts some 430s were used as pilots at Edinburgh Waverley East End (the WestEnd of the station was the preserve of the large-wheeled 0-6-0STs). The engine shown,No. 430, lasted until 1924 and was withdrawn as one of LNER class J84.

The drawing is based on Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 4938B, amplified with infor-mation from the diagram books. Drawing 4938B in fact shows a proposed and unexecutedfurther rebuild proposed by Reid, in which the class would have undergone some updatingof the fittings and received a cab similar to those on the Ivatt tank engines of the GreatNorthern Railway. Some retrofitting of the engine shown in the General Arrangement istherefore required to depict the actual final appearance of the engines.



Engine wheelbase 7’ 6” + 7’ 9” (original) 7’ 6” + 8’ 0” (rebuilt): wheels 5’ 0”

Dugald Drummond’s first large locomotives for the N. B. R. were some goods 0-6-0s, ex-tremely heavy for the period, which rather resembled those of his mentor and teacher Wil-liam Stroudley. Like Stroudley’s goods engines these had a long boiler perched on arelatively short wheelbase, with substantial overhangs front and rear and a spacious cabwith a full roof and handrail pillars.

As first built these engines had crosshead pumps and a condensing feed-water heatingarrangement by which some of the exhaust steam was fed back from the cylinders througha large-bore pipe down the middle of the frames to the tender to warm the water. In theorythis arrangement was supposed to save fuel, but in practice the inconvenience and limita-tions caused by the reliance on crosshead pumps were not worth whatever modest sav-ings were made, and Drummond replaced the pumps with injectors on all his engines aftera few years.

Drummond’s dependency on Stroudley’s ideas was not absolute. Drummond did not followStroudley’s ideas in the matter of valve-chests or Salter safety valves, and had his ownideas in the matter of chimney and dome profiles and cab roofs. He never adopted the pe-culiar late Stroudley tender with inside bearings to the wheels.

It is noteworthy that large boilers designed for the Big Drummond goods engines were usedunaltered for the first four ‘Abbotsford’ 4-4-0s. The latter engines were ordered as the resultof amending an existing order for 4-4-0s, and some of the design peculiarities of the first4-4-0s reflected this dependency on material ordered for the goods engines. The goodsengines had a relatively shallow firebox, sloping sharply up to the rear to clear the reartrailing axle. The ashpan was similarly ingeniously shaped to clear the running-gear and theexhaust steam pipe for the feed water heating.

Matthew Holmes rebuilt the class between 1898 and 1903. The boiler designed for theHolmes 18” 0-6-0 replaced the original type with its sharply sloping grate. As a result Hol-mes had to extend the wheelbase by three inches. Since other aspects of the profile of theframes were preserved from the Drummond originals, it really does look as though addi-tional metal was ‘spliced’ between the driving and trailing axles. If entirely new frames hadbeen fitted to the class at rebuilding, they would surely have lasted longer than the early1920s.

This drawing is based on the Cowlairs official General Arrangement for the rebuild of theclass, Cowlairs drawing No. 1372B.

nbr474_original_livery_dwg


Engine wheelbase 7’ 9” + 7’ 9”: wheels 4’ 6” + 7’ 0” + 4’ 6”

In 1876 Drummond was busily ordering quite large numbers of big 0-6-0s from Neilson &Co. and from Cowlairs works. He then conceived a desire to accelerate the fastest Edin-burgh to Glasgow expresses, which were still being hauled at the time by Beyer, Peacocksingles, capable of a maximum speed in the high 50s of miles per hour.

Accordingly Drummond quickly designed a medium-sized modern 2-2-2. Much has beenmade of the resemblance to the Stroudley single ‘Grosvenor’, but Drummond also devel-oped a boiler and valve gear set that he would re-use for his 17” tank engines and smallgoods engines throughout his superintendency.

As first built the two singles, 474 and 475, had the same feed water heating and crossheadpumps as the 0-6-0s. However, these fixtures were very quickly replaced with conventionalinjectors. Other archaic features in the design remained, notably the wooden brakes onboth engine and tender. (The drawing currently displayed imports the tender from otherDrummond designs and shows metal brakes, which is not correct and will be amended.)

The two locomotives worked on the Edinburgh and Glasgow main line for over 30 years,looking quite strange when they were hauling Reid bogie carriages, and were never rebuilt.Over time they acquired Holmes safety valves, tallow cups and other detail modifications,and went through several changes of livery. They were both withdrawn in 1910, reputedlywithout being placed on the duplicate list; however, duplicate numbers are assigned to themin a contemporary diagram book, and it seems likely that they received these for a shortwhile as their capital stock numbers were re-used for Reid 0-4-4Ts before the singles werewithdrawn.

The drawing is based on the detailed engraving of the General Arrangement published inthe contemporary engineering press.

nbr476_Holmes_rebuild_dwg.JPG


Engine wheelbase 6’ 6” + 6’ 7” + 9’ 0”: wheels 3’ 6” and 6’ 6”

This is the first of several drawings of the famous ‘Abbotsford’ class, Dugald Drummond’sfirst 4-4-0s and one of the first designs that can fairly be called the modern steam passen-ger locomotive. The class appeared in three batches of four, the first two foursomes fromNeilson & Co. and the last quartet from Cowlairs works.

This drawing shows the first of the class as rebuilt by Matthew Holmes in 1902 with thelarger boiler introduced four years earlier on his ‘729’ class. Six of the twelve Abbotsfordswere rebuilt to this design. The drawing is based on Cowlairs General Arrangement No.1660B, a particularly clear and fine piece of draughtsmanship.

nbr479_rebuild_as_1324_late_livery_dwg



This drawing, based on a published photograph, shows a particularly pronounced exampleof a phenomenon described in the introduction: the replacement of nearly all the majorcomponents of a locomotive which nevertheless inherits the number and the theoretical‘identity’ of its predecessor.

The reason for the replacement of the mainframes of the locomotive has not been officiallystated, but may be conjectured to be as follows. The mainframes of the Drummond 4-4-0shad a ‘splice’ just ahead of the cylinder block, which thinned the width of the frames by twoinches overall. This device was used to facilitate the turning of the front bogie wheels oncurves. Unfortunately N. B. R. engines were often lifted by the front buffers to service thebogies, and even in the case of the Holmes engines the extreme shearing pressure on thefront section of the frames often caused the mainframes to buckle upwards. This syndromecan be seen in multiple photographs of Holmes 4-4-0s late in their careers.

Presumably something similar but worse must have happened to 479, the former‘Abbotsford’, because it was rebuilt in Reid’s time with a whole new set of frames based onthe Holmes pattern, but shortened by 3” at the rear end to match the Drummond design.The result was an interesting composite of different styles, though almost nothing exceptthe tender was pure Drummond. Note that the front bogie wheels have ten spokes while therear set has twelve – this is quite authentic.

This drawing is based in information from a variety of archive drawings, including the Gen-eral Arrangements for the rebuilt Abbotsfords and the Holmes 729 class, besides photo-graphs.

nbr490_original_Drummond_livery_2c_dwg



The lovely and celebrated ‘Abbotsfords’ are in some respects rather elusive subjects for adrawing. The archive drawings for the first Neilson batches have not been located, and thepublished General Arrangement for the class dating from 1878, while lavishly dimen-sioned, shows aspects of the design that never reached production, such as the feed wa-ter heating and crosshead pumps. It also shows a pattern of brake shoes that was not usedon this class.

This drawing therefore shows the first of the Cowlairs-built final quartet, which employed anumber of standard Cowlairs components not used by Neilsons (e.g. the steam keys andinjectors). The other main difference from the first eight lies in the brake gear, which wasdirectly operated Westinghouse air brake gear right from the start. It required something ofa ‘stretch’ to fit the vertical air brake cylinder with cams and levers to driving wheels spacedso far apart.

This drawing is based primarily on the published drawing for the class and on the Cowlairsarrangement of the rebuild (for the framing) but includes details from the part drawings ofthe Drummond model in the Royal Museum of Scotland.

nbr491_rebuild_as_1387_dwg



The remaining six Abbotsfords were rebuilt in 1904 almost identically with the first six ex-cept for the cab. The side-window cab had been introduced the previous year on the large317 class 4-4-0s (not yet shown in this gallery). It was not exactly the same as that used onReid’s designs: the roof lacked an angle iron, and the curve to the trailing edge of thesidesheets had a different geometry. The cabs of the Abbotsford rebuilds followed the 317rather than the Reid pattern, though an inch shorter in height than the 317s. 1387, formerly491, was the last of the Abbotsfords to survive in service and worked on local trains fromEdinburgh into Fife in the mid-1920s. It and 1361 lasted long enough to receive full L. N. E.R. green livery and lining out, though attached to Holmes tenders by that point. The ‘patch’over the cylinders shows where the original cylinder castings had been replaced with thelater Holmes pattern, which did not have the fully cast channel for the outward section of theexhaust duct.

The cab is derived from the General Arrangement of the Holmes 317 Class 4-4-0, CowlairsNo. 1742B, slightly modified.

nbr566_081_original_Drummond_livery_dwg



This drawing shows one of Matthew Holmes’s earliest products. His first designs followedDrummond’s general principles closely, but with numerous variations as to detail. Most im-portantly, Holmes insisted right from the start on flat grates rather than sloping ones. Thismeant in general that for any given design Holmes allowed 3” longer in the wheelbase toaccommodate the firebox with its flat grate. So the first 17” 0-6-0s looked very like Drum-mond engines, but had a 3” longer coupled wheelbase compensated by a rear overhangreduced by the same amount. Holmes also resorted to slotted mainframes, not used atCowlairs since Wheatley’s superintendency. He followed his own choices in details such asclack valves, whistle settings, and in due course also tallow cups.

There were several variants of the 566 class 17” 0-6-0 (later LNER ‘J33’ class). The firsttwelve had Drummond-style cabs and tenders very similar to Drummond’s design. The nextdozen, the variant shown here, had Drummond cabs but the early Holmes tender withoutfootplate valances. The next six in turn had round Stirling-type cabs and the same kind oftender. Finally, six engines were produced with round cabs and the final design of Holmestender with valances. As a general rule the earlier engines tended to have steam brakesonly as first built, while the later ones had Westinghouse and were used for mixed duties.

The drawing here is based on Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 386B, showing the firstversion of the 17” 0-6-0. The tender is derived from the sources for the standard Holmestender, somewhat adapted. The livery is standard Drummond, since it has been proved thatHolmes did not adopt his first distinctive style, with cream-black-red lining, until around1886.

nbr566_140_rebuild_late_livery_dwg



Two of the 566 class 0-6-0s were rebuilt or rather reboilered in 1908; the remainder wereall treated between 1911 and 1913. The rebuilding process added yet further diversity tothe class already distinguished by two different cabs and three different tenders, since irre-spective of age some engines received new boilers with safety valves on the dome, othersboilers with a small Reid-pattern dome and safety valves on the firebox crown. In all casesthe boilers had faceplate combination injectors, and therefore dispensed with the clackvalves on the boiler side above the leading wheel. This drawing shows 140, one of theWestinghouse fitted engines, as rebuilt in 1912.

The drawing here varies the information contained in the Cowlairs GA No. 386B, and bor-rows details from other sources, e.g. for the rebuilt boiler. The cab is based on Cowlairsdetail drawing No. 1277B, prepared for Drummond 0-6-0 No. 524 and therefore slightlyadapted to take account of the different framing of the Holmes engines.




Matthew Holmes’s first essay in designing a 4-4-0 followed extremely closely on a designfor a light 17” 4-4-0 drawn up by Drummond and built only in the form of the model in theRoyal Museum of Scotland (which confusingly is named and numbered for ‘Abbotsford’,although it is nothing of the kind). Drummond had prepared two designs for light 4-4-0s,one with a 7’ 9” and one with a 8’ 0” coupled wheelbase, employing the same boiler asused on the 494 class 4-4-0Ts. Holmes took the latter design and stripped out the Drum-mond boiler with its sloped grate, replacing it with the boiler already used on the 17” goodsengines of the ‘566’ class. This required the coupled wheelbase to be lengthened by 3” ason the 566s. He then applied his own design of cab and rearranged the brakes, again toconform to his 17” goods engines. Otherwise aspects of Drummond’s design, such as thebogie frame profile, spring arrangements and livery, were perpetuated on this class thoughon no subsequent engine built by Holmes. (Holmes would later exchange the coil andspring arrangements on the 574s to conform to his preferred practice.)

The resulting six engines were useful enough, though Holmes did not extend the class be-yond six examples. They were used as pilots and for all kinds of ‘special’ work including, forexample, a ceremonial train on the occasion of one of W. E. Gladstone’s Midlothianelection campaigns.

Possibly because of the unusual genesis of this class, no General Arrangement has beenlocated specific to the 574s despite careful research. This drawing has therefore beencompiled from the diagram books assisted by the copious information available for theDrummond light 4-4-0 design. However, one detail has eluded me so far, the precise shapeof the tiebar that linked the rear coupled wheel brakes and must have looped around thereverser reach arm. More evidence is needed before this detail can be added.

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In 1911 W. P. Reid gave the 574s an extremely drastic ‘rebuild’ which essentially involvedremoving all of the locomotive except the bogie, wheels and tender and renewing the rest.Simply put, Reid constructed a variant of the ‘729’ class 4-4-0 but with his own design ofcab and boiler fittings, and with a brake arrangement closer to that of the original 574s. Thisdesign in due course became the L. N. E. R. ‘D31’ class, an extremely useful generalpurpose passenger design that lasted into the early 1950s.

In one respect, however, the 574 rebuilds differed from the rest of the Holmes 4-4-0s asrebuilt by Reid. As first built in 1911 they had a weighshaft for the reverser, with a largebalance weight, underneath the plane of the driving axle, linked by a long sweeping curvedreach-rod to the lever reverse in the cab. This arrangement is clearly shown on the Gener-al Arrangement and is visible on a photograph of 579 at Inverkeithing before the First WorldWar. In this photograph the usual reach-rod and lever arm normally seen in front of the leftcoupled wheel splasher are conspicuously absent. The 574s had had their reversing gearaltered to the standard ‘D31’ pattern by the early 1920s at the latest. This drawing showsthe 1911 arrangement.

This drawing closely follows the Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 3559B.

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Matthew Holmes’s 0-4-4T was an enlargement of a Drummond design, the ‘157’ class firstbuilt as 0-4-2Ts and converted to run with trailing bogies and a lengthened rear end c.1881. The Drummond tanks had been successful in their rebuilt form and Holmes chose toproduce his own version.

The coupled wheelbase was the same as in the Drummond 0-4-4Ts, and also the same asthe front section to the wheelbase of the Drummond and Holmes 0-6-0s. This allowed there-use of the valve gear layout from the Drummond and Holmes 17” 0-6-0s and a numberof standard components. Holmes lengthened (by 3”!) the distance between the rear drivingwheels and the bogie wheels to accommodate the flat grate of the boiler from the ‘566’class 0-6-0s and the ‘574’ class 4-4-0s. The cylinders were 17” x 24”. Overall Holmesstretched the rear end of the Drummond 0-4-4T design by a few inches here and there,allowing the side tanks to be made slightly lower and the whole design less top-heavy.

After this design Holmes evidently decided that, with the Drummond small 0-6-0 and 4-4-0tanks for local work, and the large 4-4-0Ts and two classes of 0-4-4T for heavier trains, allthe needs for passenger tank engines on the N. B. R. had been met. No further passengertank engines were built until Reid’s time, and those were enlargements of the 586 classwith bigger boilers at higher pitch.

This drawing has been prepared using Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 890B, the origi-nal works drawing for the class.

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The Holmes 0-4-4Ts were rebuilt around the same time as the 17” 0-6-0s, with the sameboilers as the latter, and with the same resulting diversity between examples. Some loco-motives received new boilers with safety-valves on a Holmes-pattern dome like the origi-nals; others, like the one shown here, were fitted with the small closed Reid dome andsafety-valves over the firebox crown. Injectors and a variety of details were brought up todate. As L. N. E. R. class G7 the class continued to work into the grouping on a variety ofbranch and local services.

This drawing has been prepared with the assistance of Cowlairs General Arrangement No.4133B, prepared for the rebuild.

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The twelve majestic Holmes ‘seven-footers’ appeared between 1886 and 1887 and arepersonal favourites of mine. Technically speaking, Holmes designed a boiler with the

of an ‘Abbotsford’ type, with a 10’ 3½” barrel and 6’ 6” firebox, and of course with a flatgrate. He then inserted this boiler in an Abbotsford-style mainframe, adjusted for the 7’ 0”wheels, and lengthened the coupled wheelbase by the necessary three inches. One curi-ous anomaly was that although the cylinders were 18” x 26” as on the Abbotsfords, Holm-es fitted a slightly narrower chimney of dimensions more usually associated with 17”cylinder engines. The slightly greater degree of ‘choke’ was a good idea and was taken upon many engines when rebuilt.

The result was satisfying visually and extremely successful mechanically. These engineswere used on the principal express trains of the N. B. R. for many years even after theyhad been superseded by later and more powerful designs.

This drawing follows the Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 941B for the class as firstbuilt, with the frame details cross-checked with the drawing of the rebuild.

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W. P. Reid gave the seven-footers a much more modest rebuild than the 574s in the sameyear as the latter, 1911. The frames, cylinders and valve gear arrangements were basicallyuntouched apart from renewal of worn parts, although the cylinder blocks were renewedwith the later Holmes 633 pattern, which was mechanically identical though different incasting details. The brakes were altered to a clasp arrangement like that used on Holmes’sWest Highland Bogies and 317s and the Reid 4-4-0s. The boiler was similar to the originalthough slightly different in construction, and of course more modern injectors and safetyvalves were fitted. The main visual changes were the more pronounced taper on the chim-ney, a distinctive and attractive feature, and of course the side-window cab. Even in theiraltered appearance the engines remained very elegant.

As rebuilt the seven-footers continued to work Edinburgh to Glasgow expresses into the1920s as well as local trains all over the system. No. 603 worked on the West Highland linefor some years, most implausibly for an engine with such large wheels but with appar- entsuccess.

This drawing follows Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 3564B. Note that although thisdrawing shows the engine with Westinghouse brake only, most of the class were ultimatelydual braked.

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This drawing shows the special decoration devised for Seven-footer No. 602 when it drewthe ceremonial train at the opening of the Forth Bridge in 1890. It also shows some of theextra detail, including the highlighting of wheel centres and spokes, that Holmes used forhis higher-status passenger engines before 1893.

The sources for this drawing are the same as those for the other Seven-footers.




Holmes waited until 1890 before adding to the number of 6’ 6” express engines with a 9’ 0”coupled wheelbase. The 633 class began to appear in that year and production continuedinto the middle of the decade. These were entirely straightforward engines in what was nowHolmes’s mature style, and they were both reliable and on occasions very fast indeed. No.293 reputedly held for many years – perhaps still does – the record for the fastest run fromEdinburgh to Dundee, at an almost unbelievable and terrifying 59 minutes.

The locomotive shown here was the subject of quite a celebrated photograph taken at Pertharound the middle to late 1890s. It shows the locomotive as built but in the later Hol- meslivery. Note that this particular example had bogie wheelsets with twelve rather than themore normal ten spokes. These anomalous bogies circulated around the Holmes 4-4- 0seven after rebuilding.

The drawing is based principally on Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 1197B, supple-mented by a number of other drawings and additional evidence.

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This drawing represents the more typical ‘D31’ type rebuild, in this case of a 633 class 4-4-0 carried out in 1918. The Reid / Chalmers rebuilds of the later Holmes 4-4-0s were muchless radical than those that produced the first six, Nos. 574-9. In these later rebuilds theframes were mostly untouched, except that the weighshaft for the reversing gear wasmoved from below the plane of the cylinders to some 16¾” above it, and the now redun-dant lower frame extension was cut off. This gave a more direct and natural link to the le-ver reverse that replaced the Drummond-style screw reverser on the rebuilds.

This drawing shows the Reid pattern rebuild with Adams equalized bogie springing and thetaller, more tapered chimney. Walter Chalmers designed a slightly different pattern of re-build with independent helical springs on the bogie axles and a parallel chimney one inchshorter than on the Reid versions.

This drawing follows the Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 3559B with modifications. Theexample illustrated, No. 641, worked from Dunfermline Upper shed on the eve of grouping.




Drummond’s 18” goods engines had shared boiler designs with the ‘Abbotsford’ 4-4-0s –indeed the reverse is more true, since the first Abbotsfords were built with materials forsome 0-6-0s ordered but then cancelled in favour of 4-4-0s at the last minute. However,Holmes abhorred the steeply sloping grates of the ‘big Drummonds’ and took until 1888before producing an equivalent 18” goods with a 4’ 6¼” diameter boiler. In the end he strucka compromise between the large and small Drummond goods. He gave his 18” 0-6- 0s aboiler barrel 10’ 2¼” long and a firebox 5’ 5” long, the latter being the same length as fittedto the 17” goods. The cylinders and valve gear of the big Drummonds were incorpo- ratedwithout significant alteration (indeed Holmes used Drummond’s two standard valve gearlayouts for new locomotives for most of his career). The result was the most numer- ousclass of engines on the N. B. R., built almost identically both by Cowlairs, Neilsons andSharp Stewart. (Neilsons showed a touch of individuality by varying the cutouts on the ten-der mainframes from Holmes’s standard – take a close look at Maude’s tender for compar-ison.)

The drawing here shows No. 660, one of the Cowlairs-built engines. It is based on Cow-lairs General Arrangement No. 1109B and also on the Sharp Stewart General Arrange-ment. The sources for the Holmes tender are multiple, including Cowlairs drawings Nos.1403B and 5020B.

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W. P. Reid’s rebuilding of Holmes’s 18” goods engines preserved the lengthwise dimen-sions of the boiler but enlarged the diameter considerably (to the same as seen on the‘729’ class 4-4-0s) and also raised the pitch slightly. At the same time the chimneys werefitted to 4½” less than the full height allowed by the loading gauge, yielding a maximumheight of 12’ 7½” and making the design look even more compact. Apart from the reboiler-ing and the new side-window cabs, little was changed in this very successful goods loco-motive design.

No. 660 was rebuilt in 1913, before the black goods livery and control numbers came in,and can therefore be depicted accurately in the full N. B. livery of the Reid period.

The locomotive drawing is based on Cowlairs General Arrangement Drawing No. 4314,prepared for the Reid rebuild, and the tender on drawing 5020B.

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The Holmes ‘West Highland Bogie’ or 693 class was an interesting venture. Holmes insert-ed the boiler from his very successful 18” goods, complete with its shorter than normalsmokebox, into a shortened passenger locomotive frame, adapted for much smaller drivingwheels. He then fitted 18” x 24” cylinders, with their stroke an inch shorter than was stand-ard for the Drummond and Holmes 4-4-0s.

Produced from 1893 onwards ostensibly as a small-wheeled version of the Holmes 4-4-0for the West Highland Railway, more of the class were built than the rather sparse sched-ules of the West Highland line could possibly require, and they worked on secondary, localand mixed traffic in all sorts of areas of the N. B. R. system. They are reported to have beenslippery customers, but one wonders whether this was in the somewhat special con- ditionsof the West Highland (where the same criticism was more recently made of the ‘Glens’).

The West Highland Bogies were not rebuilt with the exception of No. 695, which underwenta complicated and expensive rebuild, involving two successive sets of new frames, to ac-commodate the boiler design from the Reid superheated 4-4-2Ts and cylinders with pistonvalves above. The fact that the remainder were not rebuilt has contributed to the impres-sion that they were relative failures. It is a mystery to me why the class was not more sim-ply and much more cheaply rebuilt with the boiler from the rebuilt 18” 0-6-0s (the ‘J36’design) which would have fitted in the locomotive without the need for any drastic main-frame reconstruction. The perception may well have been that, given the relentless in-crease in the size and weight of carriages, the age of smaller 4-4-0s was past.

The drawing is based on the published General Arrangement of the class for both locomo-tive and tender.

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In 1898 Holmes copied the initiative taken two years earlier by J. F. McIntosh of the Cale-donian and fitted a substantially enlarged boiler into his standard 4-4-0. In reality virtuallynothing was changed from the frames and motion of the 633 class: the nominal increase incylinder diameter to 18¼” was no more than a slight boring out of the standard casting, andmany locomotives theoretically with 18” cylinders had cylinder bores as wide as that andmore. The principal change was the enlarged boiler; important additional details were thenew combination injectors on the backhead and the pressure sanding gear under therunning plate. The cab was extended backwards somewhat, and additional handrails andfootsteps were provided for the convenience of crews.

The 729 class took over from the earlier 4-4-0s on the major expresses. They ran for sometwenty years before being rebuilt to the ‘D31’ pattern, which entailed purely cosmeticchanges, the essential size and mechanical workings of the locomotives remaining un-changed. It was some of the 729 class that lasted the longest of all, working on the Sillothbranch trains into the early 1950s.

This drawing is based on Cowlairs General Arrangement No. 1508B.

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