Ninety-three Locomotives Built in One Year.

These are busy days in the locomotive building and repair shops of the four big Home railways. Each of the Home lines manufactures most of its own locomotives, placing only a proportion of its orders with outside makers. The principal shops concerned are the Swindon works of the Great Western, the Crewe shops of the L.M. and S., the Doncaster plant of the L. & N.E., and the Eastleigh works of the Southern. Typical of the activities of these establishments is the record of the work performed at Swindon in a recent twelve monthly period.

In this works 93 new locomotives were built in twelve months. These comprised forty 4—6—0 “Hall” class locomotives for general passenger and long-distance

Famous British Locomotive Works.
Locomotive testing plant, Great Western Railway, Swindon, England.

excursion train haulage, forty-seven 2—6—2 tank type engines for fast suburban haulage, and six 0—6—0 tank locomotives for railmotor services. This building work was in addition to the very extensive repair work completed during the period.

Swindon, in addition to building locomotives, is largely employed on the construction and maintenance of passenger carriages and goods wagons. During 1931 the works turned out 293 new passenger carriages, including 45 for mainline use with corridors and lavatories, and 120 non-corridor cars for suburban and short-haul use. The total also included four new first-class and one composite (first and third class) sleeping cars, ten restaurant cars, and four luxury saloons to be attached to kitchen cars and used for special services in the same way as Pullman cars. There were also built five pairs of restaurant car sets, having a kitchen and a first-class saloon in one vehicle, and coupled by standard connections to a third-class saloon car. Seven six-wheeled milk tank cars, with glass linings of a capacity of 3,000 gallons, also were constructed, while the building of 1,835 new goods wagons was another noteworthy activity of the Swindon shops during 1931.