page_title: Great North of Scotland Railway
section_title: Early locomotives
hierarchical_section_title: Great North of Scotland Railway / Rolling stock / Locomotives / Early locomotives
caption_attribution_description: English: GN of SR Locomotive No. 47 Class "K" as originally built. The Great North of Scotland Railway had six of these locomotives built by Neilson and Company in 1866. No. 47 was withdrawn in 1921.
context_page_description: The Great North of Scotland Railway was one of the two smallest of the five major Scottish railway companies prior to the 1923 Grouping, operating in the north-east of the country. Formed in 1845, it carried its first passengers the 39 miles from Kittybrewster, in Aberdeen, to Huntly on 20 September 1854. By 1867 it owned 226 ¹⁄₄ route miles of line and operated over a further 61 miles.
  The early expansion was followed by a period of forced economy, but in the 1880s the railway was refurbished, express services began to run and by the end of that decade there was a suburban service in Aberdeen. The railway operated its main line between Aberdeen and Keith and two routes west to Elgin, connections could be made at both Keith and Elgin for Highland Railway services to Inverness. There were other junctions with the Highland Railway at Boat of Garten and Portessie, and at Aberdeen connections for journeys south over the Caledonian and North British Railways. Its eventual area encompassed the three Scottish counties of Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Moray, with short lengths of line in Inverness-shire and Kincardineshire.
context_section_description: The first locomotives were 2-4-0 tender engines, built by Wm Fairbairn in Manchester to the design of the locomotive superintendent Daniel Kinnear Clark. Twelve were ordered for the opening of the first line, seven passenger and five goods. They were all fitted with Clark's patent smoke preventing system that improved fuel economy and painted green with black borders, and red buffer beams. There was no protection for the driver or fireman and braking was by wooden blocks on the four wheels of the tender. The railway opened with only five locomotives, and within days one had been seriously damaged in the collision at Kittybrewster and a second had a mechanical fault. Two more locomotives had arrived by the end of 1854, and the order was complete by summer 1855. Four more passenger locomotives were ordered in 1857, weatherboards and sanding equipment had been fitted by 1860, and cabs added in the 1880s. John Folds Ruthven replaced Clark in 1855 and an order was placed with Beyer, Peacock & Co. for two 0-4-0 tank engines to bank trains on the line to Waterloo near Aberdeen harbour. After William Cowan became locomotive superintendent nine more locomotives arrived in 1859–61. These were followed by nine 4-4-0s, also built by R. Stephenson & Co., and delivered between 1862 and 1864. Six more powerful 4-4-0 locomotives arrived from Neilsons in 1866, and were fitted with a more modern bogie. Three passed to the London and North Eastern Railway after the 1923 Grouping, and No. 45 hauled a train at the Railway Centenary celebrations in 1925 before being scrapped.
  In 1863 the Great North took over the operation of the Banffshire and Morayshire Railways and absorbed their locomotives. The Banffshire had four locomotives, two 0-4-2 tanks, named "Banff" and "Portsoy", built by Hawthorns of Leith for the line's opening in 1859. The other two locomotives were 0-4-2 tender engines, one bought secondhand from the Scottish Central Railway, having been built in 1848 by the Vulcan Foundry in Warrington and named "Keith", and a similar tender engine built by Hawthorns. The Morayshire Railway had started services in 1852 with two 2-2-0 engines designed by James Samuel and built by Neilsons. The locomotives had proved inadequate and were replaced by two larger 2-4-0 tank engines. The Great North took over the operation of the Deeside Railway in 1866. Its first two locomotives were 0-4-2 tank engines, built by Hawthorns and arrived in 1854. No. 3, a tender locomotive, was delivered in 1854 from Dodds & Son of Rotherham, but this had mechanical defects and was never satisfactory. Between 1857 and 1866 four 0-4-2 tender locomotives arrived from Hawthorns; these were similar to the Banffshire's Nos. 3 and 4; the Deeside also bought the Banffshire's No. 4 in 1864. One of these locomotives was given a large six-wheeled tender to allow it to haul the Royal Trains from Aberdeen to Ballater without stopping. The tender locomotives were found to be unstable at high speeds were all withdrawn by 1880.
  The company's financial difficulties after 1866 had precluded the purchasing of any more locomotives until six 4-4-0 locomotives were built in 1876 by Neilson's, partly to replace the Deeside locomotives. These had larger boilers and fireboxes than previous locomotives and were the first to be built with cabs. The next twelve locomotives had rounded splashers over the trailing driving wheels, meaning the shape of the cab was different, but retained the brass dome on the firebox, copper capped chimney and had brass bands joining the firebox and boiler. After James Manson became locomotive superintendent in 1883 he introduced a more contemporary design of locomotive, with inside cylinders and doors on the side of cabs and without brass domes or copper chimneys. The first six were built by Kitson & Co in Leeds in 1884, followed by three similar but lighter in 1885. The railway had inherited most of its tank engines from the Deeside, Morayshire and Banffshire Railways and these needed replacing, so six arrived in 1884 and three slightly larger the following year
caption: One of the locomotives built in 1866
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