page_title: Derby Litchurch Lane Works
section_title: Midland Railway (1876–1923)
hierarchical_section_title: Derby Litchurch Lane Works / History / Midland Railway (1876–1923)
caption_attribution_description: English: Annual dinner of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Derby, 1898. It was held in the carriage works of the Midland Railway Company.
context_page_description: Derby Litchurch Lane Works was built by the Midland Railway in Derby, England, in the 19th century. The plant has produced rolling stock under the ownership of the Midland Railway, the LMS, British Railways, British Rail Engineering Limited, ABB, Adtranz and Bombardier Transportation.
context_section_description: Railway building began at Derby Works in 1840, when the North Midland Railway, the Midland Counties Railway and the Birmingham and Derby Railway set up engine sheds as part of their Tri Junct Station. When the three merged in 1844 to form the Midland Railway its first Locomotive and Carriage Superintendent Matthew Kirtley set out to organise their activities and persuaded the directors to build their own rolling stock, rather than buying it in (see Derby Works).
  By the 1860s the works had expanded to such an extent that he was considering reorganising it and, in 1873, it separated into the Midland Railway Locomotive Works, known locally as "The Loco", and a new Carriage and Wagon Works further south, off Litchurch Lane, locally known as the "Carriage and Wagon". This was completed by his successor Samuel Waite Johnson, under the control of Thomas Gethin Clayton The Derby Carriage and Wagon works were built in 1876.
  The carriages of the time were generally less than 50 feet long but, possibly because the Midland had just taken delivery of its first Pullman car 56 feet 5 inches long, Clayton had the foresight to design the works to deal with vehicles up to 70 feet. This meant, for instance, that the traversers at the end of each shed were still in use a century later.
  Production had begun in 1873 (at the original loco works) of carriages from kits supplied by the Pullman Company of Detroit in United States. These were followed by Clayton's own design of 54-foot-long (16 m) coaches, which incorporated both first- and third-class accommodation, and ran on four- or six-wheeled bogies. Initially claret or dark red, with dark green locomotives, the livery of both was changed to the well-known crimson in 1883. Five layers of undercoat were used, followed by a top coat and three coats of varnish.
  A six-wheeled coach built in 1885 is in the National Railway Museum. In 1879 the first bogie coaches were built for the Midland's line to Glasgow over its newly opened Settle-Carlisle line. Clayton's successor in 1903 was David Bain., the works building sleeping cars and dining coaches. In 1904 two steam motor-carriages were fitted out for the Morecambe-Heysham service.
  Ten- and twelve-ton wagons were produced in quantity, starting with a set of components in the morning, each would be assembled for painting by the end of the day. Reid and E.J.H.Lemon studied American mass production methods and introduced them around 1919, raising output to 200 wagons and 10 coaches a week. The sawmill was recognised as the most modern and largest in Europe, with over 2000 miles of timber being seasoned, of nearly sixty different varieties, from pine to lignum vitae.
  In 1914 the works turned to producing supplies for the army of World War I, building ambulance trains and army wagons, plus parts for rifles.
caption: Annual dinner of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers held in the carriage works of the Midland Railway at Derby in 1898. Samuel Johnson, the railway's Chief Mechanical Engineer was the institution president.
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