Yorkshire Engine Company
The Yorkshire Engine Company was a small independent locomotive manufacturer in Sheffield. The company was formed in 1865 and produced locomotives and carried out general engineering work until 1965. It mainly built shunting engines for the British market, but also built main line engines for overseas customers.
Steam locomotives were built by the firm from 1865 to 1956 and diesel locomotives from 1950 to 1965.
The early years
The idea of a locomotive builder based near Sheffield was first suggested in 1864 by W. G. Eden, who later became the fourth Baron Auckland. At the time, Eden was Chairman of the South Yorkshire Railway, and a director of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, posts which he had taken up after retiring as a diplomat. He invited Archibald Sturrock, who was employed by the Great Northern Railway as its locomotive engineer, to be the Chairman of the new company. Alfred Sacré would be the Managing Director, and his older brother, Charles, then the Engineer and Locomotive Superintendent for the MSLR, was also part of the team.By April 1865 investors had promised £120,000 towards the estimated cost of £200,000 for setting up the company. Although Sturrock joined the board in May 1866, he did not become chairman until January 1867. A site near Blackburn Meadows was chosen for the works. Construction and the procurement of machinery began in mid-1865, and Meadowhall Works was virtually complete in May 1867, by which time all of the 2,000 shares had been taken up.
The first order received was for three 2-2-2 locomotives for the Great Northern Railway. The specification was changed and they were supplied with a 2-4-0 wheel arrangement. They were delivered two months late, the last in February 1867, and the company made a loss on them, largely because the works was not yet complete. An order for ten more followed, which were also delivered late. The first was two months late, but the final one was eight months overdue by the time it was delivered in March 1869.
Next came orders for fifty 0-6-0 locomotives for two Indian railways, but then demand tailed off. In order to keep the workforce together, other work was undertaken, including armour plated shields, lamp posts for the Chief Constable of Sheffield, and 10,000 safes. Orders from three Russian railways kept the works busy, but difficulties in obtaining payment resulted in cash-flow problems. The original directors all resigned in 1871. Locomotives were supplied to Argentina, Australia and Japan, and a number of small 0-4-0 saddle tanks were supplied to local collieries. The company continued to take on general engineering work to supplement the building of locomotives for most of its existence.
A modest profit was made in 1871, following serious losses in the previous two years. The building of locomotives to Robert Fairlie's patent started at the end of that year. Between 1872 and 1883, thirteen were supplied to the Mexican Railway in three batches. They were 0-6-6-0 double ended machines, and the middle batch had Walschaerts valve gear, believed to be the first time that this design was built in Britain. The Mexican locomotives were capable of burning coal or wood as a fuel, while two supplied to Sweden burnt peat. The peat burners were not a success and were rebuilt at four 2-4-0 saddle tanks. An order for ten Fairlies received in 1873 for nitrate railways in Peru were built, but were not shipped because payment was not received. Four went to the Trancaucasian Railway near the Black Sea, and six were eventually shipped to a new Nitrate Railway Company in 1882. They had a 2-6-6-2 wheel arrangement, and at 85 tons each, Engineering reported that they were the heaviest locomotives in the world in 1885.
An attempt to build marine engines and traction engines to patents by Loftus Perkins was less successful. When purchasers pulled out, Perkins sued the company, which lost £34,532 on the venture. A joint venture with Perkins for the construction of tramway engines was also a failure. When there was insufficient work, the company built 0-4-0 saddle tanks for stock, which enabled collieries and engineering works to buy locomotives off the shelf. This practice continued throughout the life of the company.
By 1880, the company was in serious financial difficulties. The Russian debts were never paid, and a dubious method was used to write off the loss made on the marine engines. Despite a successful call to shareholders for more money, the company chose voluntary liquidation as the best option in July 1880. Liquidators ran the business for three and a half years, during which time turnover increased and profits of £9,419 were made. In September 1883, the second Yorkshire Engine Company was launched, by issuing 2,400 shares valued at £25, giving a capital of £60,000. Few locomotive manufacturers were profitable at the time.
Early YEC locomotives produced for the UK market consisted mainly of 0-4-0ST and 0-6-0ST types. The style of these was typical of small locomotives of the time with the so-call ‘ogee’ tanks and very little protection for the driver. That did not stop early locomotives surviving with industrial users until the 1950s. The collieries and steelworks of Yorkshire were regular customers, with five narrow gauge locomotives going to the Chattenden and Upnor Railway, a military railway in Kent.
The 1890s saw YEC building locomotives for Chile, Peru and India. They also built a single electric locomotive for the British War Office.
Mainline engines
YEC undertook orders for mainline locomotive for the UK and overseas countries.Locomotives were built for the Great Northern Railway, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the Great Eastern Railway.
In 1871, a 2-4-0 locomotive was ordered by Japan's first railway, making the only order for Japan. This locomotive is still in existence, and now displayed at Sakuragicho railway station in Yokohama.
In 1872, three Fairlie 0-6-6-0 Articulated Locomotives were supplied to the Mexican Railways for the Orizaba, Veracruz to Esperanza, Puebla Route.
In 1874, an order for 13 F class locomotives was dispatched to New Zealand. Two of these engines survived into preservation.
- F12 at Ferrymead Railway, in a derelict state,
- F180 "Meg Merriles" at Auckland's Museum of Transport & Technology, Was in a static restored condition after retirement in 1966, but was restored to operating condition over many years and returned to service in 2018. Fifty years after being built, the builder's photo of F180 was included in an advertisement for the Yorkshire Engine Company, in a 1924 edition of The Railway Magazine.
1928 saw the LNER get locomotives delivered directly from Sheffield. These nine locomotives were Class N2 0-6-2Ts for working suburban trains.
Along with a number of other private builders, YEC built a batch of GWR 5700 Class 0-6-0PTs in 1929/1930.
Between 1949 and 1956, 50 GWR 9400 Class 0-6-0PTs were built for British Railways. The last of these, BR No. 3409, was the last steam locomotive built at Meadowhall and the last BR locomotive to be built to a pre-nationalisation design. The order for these locomotives had been given to the Hunslet Engine Company in Leeds but as it was already busy, the work was sub-contracted to Sheffield.
Far bigger than anything built for use in Britain were the export locomotives. 2-8-2 and 4-8-2 tender locomotives for South America.
Car production
During 1907 Yorkshire Engine Co. started to build motor cars, branded as 'YEC'. These were not a success and very few were produced.Miniature locomotives
The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway "Mainline in Miniature" built by Captain Howey was, and still is, well known for its fleet of engines built by Davy Paxman and based on the locomotives of Nigel Gresley. A flaw with these designs was shown up when the railway started running to Dungeness through the winter – a lack of protection for the driver.Captain Howey and Henry Greenly started work on a pair of 4-6-2 locomotives based on Canadian Pacific Railway designs, with larger, better protected, cabs. While Howey was in Australia, Greenly quarrelled with the management and engineers of the railway, before destroying the working drawings and departing. The parts, including boilers, wheels and cylinders were shipped to the Yorkshire Engine Co. and the locomotives were completed in Sheffield in 1931. It is assumed that all the detailed design works was done by the company based on a few sketches drawn by Captain Howey. YE 2294 and 2295 are better known as No. 9 Winston Churchill and No.10 Doctor Syn; they are still running and are the best known of any Yorkshire Engine Co. locomotives.
United Steel Companies and diesel locomotive development
The business was bought by the United Steel Companies on 29 June 1945. USC needed replacement locomotives so it made sense to buy a manufacturer and the idea had been put forward of developing a central engineering workshop for their steelworks at Templeborough and Stocksbridge. Both works were being expanded and redeveloped, and were easily accessible by rail from the YEC works. In the post war climate, the YEC management were willing to sell.Following the purchase, work began on building steam locomotives for the internal rail systems at several steelworks as well as ironstone mines around Britain. YEC continued to build locomotives for other customers, just as they had before the takeover.
The design for a modern 0-6-0ST locomotive was bought from Robert Stephenson & Hawthorns and locomotives of this type were built for steel works, primarily as replacements for locomotives worn out during the Second World War. This design was undoubtedly chosen because a number were already in use at Appleby-Frodingham works, Scunthorpe and given various type names. A small number of locomotives were built for ironstone mines to a War Department ‘Austerity’ design. It is believed that the use of this design was connected with the sub-contract of other locomotive construction from Hunslet Engine Company.
In 1950 a diesel-electric locomotive was built for use in the melting shop of Templeborough steelworks. The duty had special requirements for a locomotive to fit through a small opening and around tight curves while being powerful enough to haul heavy ‘Casting Cars’. The weight of the locomotive had to be high to give better grip. The design featured a Paxman engine and British Thompson-Houston electric equipment powering and 0-4-0 chassis. The first locomotive left the works at the end of 1950 with a second leaving in early 1951. No.2480 was displayed and demonstrated before final delivery while No.2481 was delivered direct from the works. Both locomotives survived to be preserved in the late 1980s.
No other locomotives were built to this design.