Locomotives
Who wouldn’t want to be an engine driver at the sight of the great gleaming locomotives on display at the Transport Museum?
Small boys and girls as well as adults, are thrilled by the enormous steam engines that dominate the main hall, by the shining brass dials and fitments of the cabs, the bright paintwork and beautiful colours.
The Transport Museum celebrates Glasgow’s great railway heritage in its remarkable collection of steam engines – which show Glasgow’s supremacy in railway engineering just as in shipbuilding.
Around 28,000 locomotives were built in the Glasgow area, two thirds of which were destined for export to far-off countries around the globe. They went to India and Australia, South Africa and South America, along with carriages and other railway engineering products.
There were five main railway companies in Scotland throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, all of them represented in the Museum’s collections: the Caledonian, Glasgow & South Western, North British, Highland and Great North of Scotland.
You can’t help but admire the handsome Highland Railway locomotive No 103 of 1894, built by Sharp, Stewart & Company at the Atlas Works in Glasgow – and you’ll love climbing into the cab and pretending to be the driver.
No 49, the Gordon Highlander, from the Great North of Scotland Railway is equally impressive. It was built in 1920 in Glasgow’s Hyde Park Works.
Locomotive building in Glasgow came to an end with the closure of the North British Locomotive Company’s Hyde Park Works in Springburn, in 1962.