North British Locomotive Company

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The North British Locomotive Company (NBL) was created in 1903 through the merger of three Glasgow companies; Sharp Stewart, Neilson & Co and Dübs and Company creating the largest locomotive building company in Europe. It has built locomotives for countries as far afield as Malaysia. Whilst highly successful as designers and builders of steam locomotives for both its domestic market and abroad, NBL failed to make the jump to diesel locomotive production. In the 1950s it signed a deal with the German company MAN to construct MAN diesel engines under licence. These power units appeared in the late 1950s build D6100, D6300, D600-D604 and Class 43 (Warship) locomotives for British Railways. None of these designs was particularly successful: constructional shortcomings with the NBL-built MAN engines made them far less reliable than the German-built examples. A typical example of this was the grades of steel that were used for exhaust manifolds in the NBL-built Class 43s - frequent manifold failures lead to loss of turbocharger drive gas pressure and hence loss of power. More importantly, the driving cabs of the locomotives would fill with poisonous exhaust fumes. British Rail had cause to return many NBL diesel locomotives to their builder for repair under warranty but they also insisted on a 3 month guarantee on all repairs (a requirement not levied on BR's own workshops).

NBL was also involved in the construction of early 25kV AC electric locomotives for the West Coast Main Line (WCML) electrification project of the early 1960s. The General Electric Company won a contract for ten locomotives and sub-contracted the mechanical design and construction to NBL. The ten locomotives were numbered E3036 to E3045 and came intro traffic in 1960-61. As with NBL's diesel locomotive designs the class suffered poor reliability and spent long periods out of service. A partial reprieve came when money was made available to extend the electrification of the WCML north to Glasgow but no immediate funds were available for British Rail to construct more electric locomotives. As such, the Class 84s were refurbished in 1972 and pressed back into service, being finally withdrawn from 1978 to 1980 following delivery of newer and more powerful Class 87 locomotives.

Perhaps unwisely, NBL had also supplied many of its diesel and electric locomotive products to British Rail at a loss, hoping to make up for this on massive future orders that never came. This and the continuing stream of warranty claims to cure poor design and poor workmanship faults proved fatal. NBL declared bankruptcy on April 19th 1962. Because of the unreliability of NBL's UK diesel and electric locomotive designs, all were withdrawn by British Rail after comparatively short lifespans. The only survivor of NBL's mainline diesel and electric products in preservation is Class 84 25kV AC electric locomotive number 84001.