Railway Company Works Doing Work for Other Firms

[Bernard Lamb]

The other day I came across a couple of boilers that had been made by the GWR at Swindon.

They were not locomotive boilers but stationary Lancashire type boilers for powering industrial beam engines.

This set me wondering if this was a common practice with all companies or just the GW.

Any one any knowledge of this subject?

Bernard

 

 

 

[ajwffc]

Crofton Pumping station is a wonderful place to visit.

[DavidR]

I know that railway companies were prevented from competing with private companies, before WW2, vis - a vis providing new locomotives, but ancillary equipment....?

Where did you photgraph the Lancashire boilers? Some sort of ex. railway owned premises? Would be interesting to know.

[HillsideDepot]

If these are at Crofton pumping station then the answer is that it's an "in-house job" as the GWR owned the Kennet & Avon Canal at one point, and ultimately oversaw it's closure.

[Kris]

It wasn't as uncommon as might be suspected. The GWR certainly did it when they wanted large batches of locos and their own works could not cope. About 1/4 of all 57xx were build externally. 

[Oldddudders]

It wasn't as uncommon as might be suspected. The GWR certainly did it when they wanted large batches of locos and their own works could not cope. About 1/4 of all 57xx were build externally. 

I think that's the opposite, railways buying in production capacity. I think the OP is about railway works doing stuff for off-railway installations.

[Bernard Lamb]

Thanks for the replies.

It is at Crofton and it is a fascinating place.

I was not aware of the common ownership regarding railway and canal, so that explains a lot.

It still begs the question as to how many the GWR built, as it seems to have been a great deal of design work if it is a one off.

Bernard

[RJS1977]

The GWR made everything for itself that it could - down to the brooms used to sweep the platforms - subject to Works capacity.

 

Interesting that the GWR went to the expense of building the new boilers for Crofton rather than using it as an excuse to close the canal. *

 

Of course most railway workshops were used for non-railway works during WW2 - Swindon made ammunition and Eastleigh built parts for Spitfires.

 

What the railway works were not permitted to do was to build locomotives for external customers, in order to protect the independent builders like Hunslet, RSH etc. 

 

 

 

* Just read on Wikipedia that the GWR attempted to get an order to close the canal in 1926 but instead were charged with improving maintenance.The last through passage of the canalprior to restoration was in 1951 i.e.after nationalisation.

[black and decker boy]

Many canals were closed to boat traffic but kept open as a watercourse by the owning company as they sold the water to industry along the banks. The Rochdale canal survived intact for this reason with only short sections in culvert. Water abstraction still takes place and is part of the balancing the Waterways trust has to do between running boats and maintaining water levels.

 

From what I understand, some early railways were built by canal companies back in Victorian times even to the point that canals were diverted to allow railways to run in \ on the original alignment (the Victorians didn't pigeon hole themselves like we do now, they just went with the next big thing and rail outperformed canals).

 

In the case of these stationary boilers, would the GWR not already have a design for its own works \ depot boilers (and possibly even for IKBs atmospheric railway before) or would they just license a design for construction in house?

[The Stationmaster]

This is a very interesting area as I'm not aware that the GWR had much in the way of Lancashire Boilers for anything - its usual practice was to use redundant loco boilers for its static steam supplies although possibly it had some Lanacashire Boilers at major installations (it did have them at Sudbrook Pumping Station I believe)?  Having said that if it had relatively small numbers of such boilers would it have been economical to tool up to make them or did it simply overhaul any that it possessed along with things which indicated rather more than that?  It would be fascinating, and informative, to hear more about that.

 

As far as war work is concerned Swindon - like many other railway workshops - was very heavily involved in a wide range of work including gun mountings (in both wars I believe) and in WWII it was involved in the manufacture of superstructures for midget submarines ('chariots'), bomb casings, and landing craft.

[Glorious NSE]

It does seem a major bit of kit to build as a one off...

 

One thought, building on what Mike says - could it have been something moved from another location? Is there a build date for it visible?

[Bomag]

Back to the origonal question. I don't know any big four works doing stuff for third parties except during the war when 8Fs were bulit by all, along with a variety of war material - including a whole batch of tanks which were so badly desigend (by someone else) that they were only ever used for training. 

[Bernard Lamb]

It does seem a major bit of kit to build as a one off...

 

One thought, building on what Mike says - could it have been something moved from another location? Is there a build date for it visible?

There are, or were, actually two of them dating from 1896 to 1903 as the date if installation.

One is now just the front and the fire box with the remainder being removed and the space now used as a shop and café.

This does allow you to see the internal arrangements.

I did not take any photos of the inside part.

If I had realised the interest this thread has created I would have taken a few more shots.

As Mike mentions I was also under the impression that railway companies usually used redundant locomotive boilers for steam raising.

That is why I asked the question.

A Swindon official drawing might shed some light on the origin of these boilers.

Or even a drawing of a similar type of boiler from another maker that could have been "Swindonised" might provide a clue.

There were older boilers that these replaced but they were of a very different type.

Bernard