MBE ALTHOUGH The RM’s souvenir issue on British locomotive builders (published in 2012 and updated in 2015), provided a good basic overview of the subject, surprisingly little in-depth data has appeared in print concerning the independent manufacturers.
A number of books have focused on individual firms, particularly the larger ones such as Hunslet, but no business assessment has been carried out on the industry as a whole. That state of affairs has now been rectified in this scholarly work by Dr Michael Bailey, although the material focuses largely on the 19th century.
Taking the late James Lowe’s epic British Steam Locomotive Builders (itself now almost half a century old) as a starting point, Dr Bailey has delved deep to produce what will almost certainly become the definitive record of workshops operating beyond the scope of the main line railway companies.