Twenty-five years ago, after returning from a visit to the Australian railway museum at North Williamstown, Victoria, my father was looking at the photographs I had taken there and commented “Where were these built?” a rhetorical question because he could see as plain as I that a majority had been constructed in Britain or to British designs. Apart from North America, most (but not all) of Europe and Russia, and certain areas of Asia, until about 1925, and in some cases after that date, the world’s railways were largely operated by locomotives which had originated in British workshops or were designs which clearly referenced British forms. Astonishingly that is actually an understatement, for British manufacturers, such as Beyer Peacock, North British and others, had an enormous percentage of the export market in locomotives ordered by Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaya, South Africa (and other parts of Africa), and also to certain of the railways of China and South American countries, particularly Argentina.
According to James W. Lowe1 there were 21 major steam locomotive manufacturers, other than the railway companies, in Britain who built, over a period of 125 years, more than 71,000 steam locomotives. It would be very time-consuming to calculate the number built for foreign concerns, but it is a fair bet that it must have been around 75%. This business came to Britain in part because we had built the first successful steam locomotives, but more especially because of Britain’s vast empire and huge foreign business interests which operated a policy of purchasing home-built equipment as a further means of increasing British income. What is of interest to the readers of this magazine is that this legacy can still be seen in railway museums across the world, where a good many of the locomotives preserved there fill gaps in our own record. The subject is actually vast in this piece I am going to restrict myself to countries of which I have had some experience or particular knowledge.
Apart from original purchases from Britain of primitive types, 2 there are several locomotives built in Britain during the mature period of design, say after 1845, which are preserved abroad and show the British influence melded on to something which is not Among these may be counted the 1856 2-4-0 built by Beyer Peacock for Sweden where is currently preserved and claimed to be ‘the oldest working locomotive in the world’. More important are those designs which actually are, or are very close to being, direct representations of typical British practice. The best of these is probably the 7ft 2-2-2 which Beyer Peacock built for the 5ft 6in Portuguese South Eastern Railway in 1862 and which, after a very long service life, has been preserved at the Santarem Museum.3 In the British context it is a very important machine, representing a locomotive design which inspired a long line of similar types, among them the Stirling 2-2-2s for the Great Northern Railway.4 Additionally it may be surprising to learn that from the mature design period, there is actually only one 2-2-2 preserved in Britain and that is the London & North Western Railway (Grand Junction Railway) No.1868 which is an outside cylindered type and therefore not entirely typical. With 18in x 22in cylinders, is derived from a type that originated with six 2-2-2s built in 1856 for the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway. They had 6ft 6in driving wheels and inside cylinders, 16in x 20in. Simply designed with double frames, the boiler was domeless, with a curvaceous safety valve above the firebox. With either domed or domeless boilers, this became a Beyer staple, and almost exact replicas were built for both home and export order. The West Midland had six of the domed boiler variant, the Dutch State Railways four and three went to the New South Wales Government Railways (NSWGR) in 1865. An inside framed version was supplied
