General Pasley, for the Board of Trade, when he inspected the Dundee & Newtyle on behalf of the Railway Department in 1842, in his report commented disparagingly on the tight ‘S'-bend near Baldovan. It was present, he wrote, because “the projector of this Railway had a favourite plan of making the wheels of Locomotive Engines travel round the outside rails of curves on their rims”. This strange comment appears to have arisen out of a misunderstanding of what was probably an early example of superelevation. The existence of the bend had come about out of a desire to save money, the contractor's temporary line having been made permanent. It was the case, however, that the early Newtyle locomotives did have to negotiate some extreme curvature, which is perhaps why they are often considered as the first to have bogies. They were not, that having been the example assembled by the Butterley Foundry in 1813 for William Chapman. The following year the first revised, eight-wheel Wylam locomotive began work, running on two sets of four wheels each in their own frame, but how much movement that permitted, and exactly what form it took, is unclear. Similarly, the first three Newtyle examples had four carrying wheels in separate frames, attached by a central pin, and usually described as bogies. The first two, Nos.1 Earl of Airlie and 2 Lord Wharncliffe, by J. & C. Carmichael of Dundee, were of the 0-2-4 arrangement, and although the carrying axles indeed sat in their own frame, the leaf springs were mounted on the main frame. The third, No.3, commonly known as Trotter, by James Stirling of the Dundee Foundry, was a 4-2-0 and in its case the springs were directly attached to the bogie frame.
On the face of it, this indeed suggests true freedom of movement, but that would have been somewhat restricted by the presence of the inordinately long and fragile connecting rod. This had some similarity to one of Crampton's early arrangements, a vertical boiler 0-2-6 with parts of the motion work close against the faces of the centre carrying wheels. A major difference was that in his first proposals, all axles were rigidly mounted individually in the main frame. It is of interest, though, that before he finally arrived at his classic stern-wheeler, he outlined a number of ideas based around what might be called the ‘Rocket-type’ singledriver locomotive with the driven wheels leading. The two Carmichael engines were of this kind, and these Dundee & Newtyle locomotives are mentioned, in part because their general layout matched some of Crampton's ideas, though it would be wrong to suggest in that respect they had any influence on his thinking. It was also in part because the first two were still in existence when Scotland's first Crampton commenced work close by, the equally innovative Tulk & Ley Kinnaird of 1847.
Dating from 1760, Thomas Heslop's general engineering Lowca Foundry in Cumberland sat beneath the cliffs close to the mouth of Lowca Beck at the point where it entered the sea. A confined, isolated site, it prospered nonetheless and by 1830 was operating under the title Tulk & Ley. The first two locomotives were completed in 1840 for the Maryport & Carlisle Railway, followed by possibly four more for the same customer up to 1845 (some sources suggest the last was delivered in 1847). an 0-4-2 tender engine, was delivered to the Cockermouth & Workington Railway in October 1846, but proved too heavy for the track of the time, while two more of the same basic arrangement went to the Whitehaven & Furness Junction Railway the following year. In the same period the company completed the 131-ton iron schooner , which was fitted out on the adjacent beach. It was from the same shore also the first seven, possibly eight, locomotives would have been shipped, northward to Maryport. The Whitehaven Junction Railway (worked by the M&CR), which passed by the Lowca Foundry and gave it a rail connection to the outside world, did not open until 19th February 1847. It is possible, however, that one Tulk & Ley locomotive did leave the works by rail over two weeks prior to the formal opening of the WJR, the first classic Crampton stern wheeler. The 4-2-0* it was intended for the Belgian Namur to Liège company (an English promotion, initially formally titled Chemins de fer de Huy à Liège et à Namur. Huy was located at its mid-point, until 1891 a terminus where trains reversed). In all, during 1846-1848 Lowca completed seven of the type, and one final example in 1854, all of the 4-2-0 arrangement, as follows (the lefthand column lists works numbers as they have been widely published). * Often rendered as 2-2-2-0, or (2+2)-2-0, here for simplicity as 4-2-0. Those familiar with the forms of Crampton mentioned above will be aware bogies were not employed. Belgian authorities show the arrangement of the same variant as 2A.
