The Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company (BRC&W) was a railway locomotive and carriage builder, founded in Birmingham, England and, for most of its existence, located at nearby Smethwick, with the factory was divided by the boundary between the two places. The company was established in 1854.[1]
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Products
BRC&W made not only carriages and wagons, but a range of vehicles, from aeroplanes and military gliders to buses, trolleybuses and tanks. Nevertheless, it is as a builder of railway rolling stock that the company is best remembered, exporting to most parts of the new and old worlds. It supplied vehicles to all four of the pre-nationalisation "big four" railway companies (LMS, SR, LNER and GWR), British Rail, Pullman (some of which are still in use) and Wagons-Lits, plus railways as diverse as those in Egypt, India, South Africa, Iraq, Malaya and Nigeria, to name but a few. The company even built, in 1910, Argentina's presidential coach, which still survives, and once carried Eva Perón.
The company built hospital trains during the Second Boer War, Handley Page bombers and Airco DH10s in 1914-1918, and tanks (including the A10 Cruiser, Churchill tank, Cromwell tank and Challenger)[2], plus Hamilcar gliders in 1939-1945.
Before World War II, the company had built steam-, petrol- and diesel-powered railcars for overseas customers, not to mention bus bodies for Midland Red, and afterwards developed more motive power products, including BR's Class 26, Class 33 (both diesel) and Class 81 (electric) locomotives. Examples of all three types are preserved.
In the years running up to 1963 the company had built an extensive number of locomotives, multiple units, and Underground cars, but then rapidly got into financial difficulties, and the business closed down. The self-funded prototype "Lion" main line locomotive was a particular disappointment, powered by a Sulzer 2,750 hp diesel engine, it was pitted against another self-funded prototype "Falcon" built by Brush at Loughborough which had twin 1,400 hp Maybach engines; after trials British Railways preferred the BRCW approach, but ordered them to be built by the Brush company.
Some of the locomotives and multiple units built by the company are listed below:
Diesel Locomotives
- 14 Commonwealth Railways NSU class in 1954
- 5 similar locos for Sierra Leone Development Corporation in 1954, plus one more in 1962
- 12 Córas Iompair Éireann 101 class in 1956–1957
- 47 British Rail Class 26 in 1958–1959
- 69 British Rail Class 27 in 1961–1962
- 98 British Rail Class 33 in 1960–1962
- 1 British Rail D0260 Lion in 1962
Electric Locomotives
Diesel Multiple Units
Electric Multiple Units
- London Underground 1923 Tube Stock
- London Underground 1938 Tube Stock
- London Underground 1956 Tube Stock
- London Underground 1962 Tube Stock
- London Underground CO/CP Stock
- London Underground R47 Stock[3]
References
- ^ White, Henry Patrick; David St. John Thomas (1963). A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain. Phoenix House. pp. 252.
- ^ Fletcher, David (1993). The Universal Tank. HMSO, for REME Museum. p. 87–89. ISBN 0-11-290534-X., p.88
- ^ Connor, Piers (1983). The 'R' Stock Story. Hemel Hempstead: London Underground Railway Society. ISBN 0 9508793 0 4.
- Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company - A Century of Achievement, 1855 - 1963, John Hypher, Colin Wheeler and Stephen Wheeler (Runpast, 1996)
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