About the NBR

A Brief History of the N. B. R. and its Locomotives.

From its modest beginnings in the mid 1840s the North British Railway grew to be the largest and most prosperous Railway in Scotland. By building new lines, acquisitions and amalgamations, at the time of the Grouping in 1923 its routes stretched from Aberdeen, in the North East, to Carlisle, in the South West and from Fort William and Mallaig in the North West to Newcastle in the South East.

At the Grouping it contributed 1074 engines, more than 55,000 wagons of various types and over 3,500 carriages to the London & North Eastern Railway. The North British Railway was authorised in July 1844 to build a Railway line from Edinburgh to Berwick upon Tweed with a branch to Haddington, and ordered its first engines in the August of that year. While its main line to Berwick was still under construction, the first acquisition by the Company was that of the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway in July 1845. There followed a period when locally promoted railways were taken over and new construction proceeded apace.

In 1862 the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway was absorbed. This Company ran from Granton on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, via the first train ferry in the world, to Perth and Dundee with various branches. Itself was an amalgamation of the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton Railway and the Edinburgh & Northern Railway.

In 1865 the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway amalgamated with the N. B. R. This company had absorbed the Caledonian & Dunbartonshire Junction Railway and the Stirling & Dunfermline Railway during its independent existence. However, two days before it amalgamated with the N. B. R. the E. & G. R. also absorbed the Monkland Railway. These major acquisitions formed the basis of the N. B. R. System, but many other smaller concerns were also added to the fold. Amongst these were The Port Carlisle Rly., Carlisle & Silloth Bay Rly., Peebles Rly., Leslie Rly., Forth & Clyde Rly. and the final take over of the Glasgow, Bothwell, Hamilton and Coatbridge Rly. in 1879.

The N. B. R. built or bought 1484 engines and the absorbed Companies donated a further 221 engines to that total although none of these lasted until the Grouping. Many of the absorbed engines were ’one offs’ and were, in most cases, fairly quickly replaced by NBR engines. The last of the absorbed engines, a G. B. H & C. R. engine, was withdrawn in 1922.

In LNER days the stock was gradually reduced, being replaced by more modern engines, until at Nationalisation only 652 passed to B. R. The final ex N. B. R. engines to be withdrawn were 65288 and 65345 (0-6-0 Goods engines of Class J36 - see photographs) in June 1967 having outlived countless much more modern classes including the B. R. Standard engines. Fortunately three examples of N. B. R. engines have been preserved: D34 4-4-0 No. 256 ‘Glen Douglas’ , J36 0-6-0 No. 65345 ‘Maude’ and Y9 0-4-0ST 68095 and all three are presently in the keeping of the Scottish Railway Preservation Society at Bo’ness.

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