THE NORTH British Locomotive Company was a powerhouse in its day. Formed in 1903 by the merger of three Glasgow companies - Dubs & Co., Sharp, Stewart & Co Ltd., and Neilson, Reid & Co, each with its own works - it became the largest locomotive building company in Europe, capable of making no fewer than 600 locomotives each year, according to the Mitchell Library, where its huge archive of photographs is held. On one particular day in March 1933, no fewer than seven locomotives from the Springburn works were carefully loaded onto the Ellerman liner, City of Barcelona, at Glasgow’s Stobcross Quay to be taken to Bombay, where they would soon begin long decades of service. Each locomotive, with tender, weighed 125 tons. The mighty Stobcross Crane (today the Finnieston Crane) had become operational the previous year. “It is estimated,” writes Michael Meighan in his book, Glasgow in 50 Buildings, “that as many as 30,000 locomotives were hauled through Glasgow’s streets by steam traction engines to be loaded on board vessels sailing to the far corners of the globe.”
As for NBL itself, says the Mitchell, it achieved many triumphs in railway engineering but also endured lengthy periods of financial difficulties in its 60 years. It found it hard to adapt as diesel and electric traction replaced steam engines, and the company went into liquidation in 1962.
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