page_title: North British Locomotive Company
section_title: Diesel locomotives
hierarchical_section_title: North British Locomotive Company / Diesel locomotives
caption_attribution_description: English: D6343 and D7072 at Old Oak Common in 1965.
context_page_description: The North British Locomotive Company was created in 1903 through the merger of three Glasgow locomotive manufacturing companies; Sharp, Stewart and Company, Neilson, Reid and Company and Dübs and Company, creating the largest locomotive manufacturing company in Europe and the British Empire.
  Its main factories were located at the neighbouring Atlas and Hyde Park Works in central Springburn, as well as the Queens Park Works in Polmadie. A new central Administration and Drawing Office for the combined company was completed across the road from the Hyde Park Works on Flemington Street by James Miller in 1909, later sold to Glasgow Corporation in 1961 to become the main campus of North Glasgow College.
  The two other Railway works in Springburn were St. Rollox railway works, owned by the Caledonian Railway and Cowlairs railway works, owned by the North British Railway. Latterly both works were operated by British Rail Engineering Limited after rail nationalisation in 1948.
  In 1918 NBL produced the first prototype of the Anglo-American Mark VIII battlefield tank for the Allied armies, but with the Armistice it did not go into production.
context_section_description: Whilst highly successful as designers and builders of steam locomotives for both its domestic market and abroad, North British failed to successfully manage the transition to diesel and electric locomotive production in the wake of the British Railways 1955 Modernisation Plan. It did build a Paxman engined diesel locomotive, British Rail 10800, originally ordered for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway before the 1948 nationalisation of British Railways, but not delivered until 1950. This was closely followed by eight 625-horsepower (466 kW) Bo-Bo diesel-electric locomotives for the Ceylon Government Railway (CGR class G2).
  Another Paxman engined locomotive was PVH1, built in 1953 as 'Paxman Voith Hydraulic 1' (hence the identity) for the Emu Bay Railway, Tasmania, and survives today preserved at the Derwent Valley Railway (Tasmania). Its wheel formation is -D- being a hydraulic transmission locomotive, so in appearance it looks like an 0-8-0. It also built eight Paxman engined shunters British Rail Class D2/1.
  In the late 1950s North British signed a deal with the German company MAN to construct further diesel engines under licence.  These power units appeared in the late 1950s' British Railways (BR) designs pre-TOPS British Rail Class D3/1 (later D3/4), and later designated Class 21, Class 22, Class 41, Class 43 (Warship) and Class 251 (Blue Pullman)  None of these were particularly successful: constructional shortcomings with the MAN engines made them far less reliable than German-built examples.  A typical example of this was the grade of steel used for exhaust manifolds in the Class 43s – frequent manifold failures led to loss of turbocharger drive gas pressure and hence loss of power.  More importantly, the driving cabs of the locomotives would fill with poisonous exhaust fumes. BR returned many North British diesel locomotives to their builder for repair under warranty and they also insisted on a three-month guarantee on all repairs (a requirement not levied on its own workshops).
caption: North British Class 22, D6343 (NBL 27916 of 1962), with Hymek D7072 at Old Oak Common, 1965.
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