Glasgow Works


Glasgow Works, formerly the St Rollox Works, is a railway rolling stock works established in the 1850s in the Glasgow suburb of Springburn by the Caledonian Railway.
Ownership of the works passed to the LMS and then to British Rail with activities reduced in the 1980s under British Rail Engineering Limited management. It was sold as part of the privatisation of British Rail and after a number of ownership changes it is today owned by Mutares.

History

St Rollox Locomotive Works and St Rollox Carriage & Wagon Works were built in 1856 in Springburn, an area in the north-east of Glasgow, Scotland, for the Caledonian Railway, which had moved away from its works at Greenock. The new works was built on the site of the station of the Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway near to the chemical works of Charles Tennant. It was named after the nearby parish church of St Roche.

War work

During World War II, St Rollox joined in the war effort, producing, among other things, Airspeed Horsa gliders for the Normandy landing airborne assault. Cowlairs also produced 200,000 bearing shells for Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.

1948 - present

After the abolition of LMS with the formation of British Railways in 1948, the works remained the primary Scottish repair centre until 1986 when, under British Rail Engineering Limited, locomotive work in general was being run down. In 1972 it was renamed from St Rollox Works to Glasgow Works in 1972. Part of the site was occupied for a time by MC Metals.
After BREL was privatised in 1988 the site was operated as a rail maintenance facility by British Rail Maintenance Limited along with Eastleigh, Doncaster and Wolverton. This facility was still a Nationalised Industry. During this period the site was reduced in size and the surplus land was sold off and is now the site of a large Tesco, Costco and Lidl. The new Springburn fire station and a Royal Mail sorting office are also located nearby. In 1995 BRML was privatised and the site was sold to a Babcock International/Siemens consortium along with the Wolverton site. In 2002 it was sold to Alstom. In 2007 Alstom sold the site to RailCare.
RailCare was placed in administration in July 2013. In August 2013 the works were purchased by Knorr-Bremse, who In 2018 sold it to Mutares. In December 2018, the new owner announced it planned to close the works.

Operations

Among the locomotives produced for the Caledonian Railway were the Cardean and Dunalastair Classes.
St Rollox was unusual in being purpose built for both locomotive and carriage and wagon works. In 1923 with the consolidation of British Railway firms created by the Railways Act 1921, it became the main works of the Northern Division of the LMS. The final batches of main line locomotives built on site were lot 11 - 30 LMS class 4F 0-6-0 freight engines numbers 4177-4206, and lot 45 comprising 10 locos of the same class. In 1929 wagon repairs were moved to Barassie, leaving St Rollox as the carriage repair centre.
As at December 2018, the works conducts component and rolling stock overhauls. Recent work has included overhauls of Class 156, Class 158 and Class 320s for Abellio ScotRail.

Literature