Kerr, Stuart and Company

It was founded in 1881 by James Kerr as "James Kerr & Company", and became "Kerr, Stuart & Company" from 1883 when John Stuart was taken on as a partner. The business started in Glasgow, Scotland, but during this time they were only acting as agents ordering locomotives from established manufacturers, among them Falcon, John Fowler & Co. and Hartley, Arnoux and Fanning. They bought the last-named company in 1892 and moved into the California Works in Stoke to begin building all their own locomotives. Hartley, Arnoux and Fanning had also been building railway and tramway plant. This side of their business was sold to Dick, Kerr and Co. in Preston.

• R. J. Mitchell, Premium Apprentice, later to design the Supermarine Spitfire aircraft.
• L. T. C. Rolt, Premium Apprentice, later to be an author and canal/railway preservation pioneer.
• T. C. B. Coleman, Premium Apprentice, later Chief Locomotive Draughtsman of the London Midland & Scottish Railway during the 1930s^[1]

Kerr, Stuart were known for producing a number of standard designs with many engines being built for stock and sold 'off the shelf' to customers. The names of these locomotive types were often derived from the purchaser of the first of that type or from the name it was given.

The Kerr, Stuart designs are typified by having a single trailing truck (allowing a large firebox to be placed behind the driving wheels) and/or having a saddle tank. Several designs of side tank locomotive were produced that shared a chassis and boiler with a saddle tank design and it is not unknown for a standard chassis from one design to be used with a different design's standard boiler to produce a locomotive to suit a customer's special requirements.

Name	Image	Wheel arrangement (Whyte)	Weight (long tons)	Notes
Huxley		0-4-0ST	16 Tons	[citation needed]
Witch			16 Tons	[citation needed]
Moss Bay		0-4-0ST	29 Tons	named after Moss Bay Haematite Iron & Steel Co Ltd, Workington
Rugeley		0-6-0ST	31 Tons	[citation needed]
Priestley		0-4-0WT	25.5 Tons	No 3063 (1918) initially supplied to the National Shipyard in Beachley was purchased by W & R Parker in 1980. It was restored to working order at The Flour Mill in Bream, Gloucestershire in 2012 and is informally known as 'Willy the Well Tank". was at the Barry Tourist Railway in summer 2021. Now on loan to the Swindon and Cricklade Railway for the 2024 season. This is essentially a Borrows design from the 1860s.
Argentina		0-6-0T	34 Tons	[citation needed]
Victory				[citation needed]
La Manada		4-4-0		Locomotive number 1327 of 1913 is preserved in Ferro Club Villa Lynch (Argentina)[citation needed]

Name	Image	Wheel arrangement (Whyte notation)	Weight (working order)[clarification needed]	Notes
Wren		0-4-0ST	3.4 tons (4.2 tons)	Pixie one of 27 of the Wren class ordered for a sewer contract in Essex, sold to Devon County Council in 1929. Purchased by the Industrial Locomotive Society in 1957, it entered service at Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway in 1969. Works number 3114 was part of the same batch of Wrens on the sewer contract. Its history beyond this is uncertain but it is believed that it worked on the dismantling of the Ashover Light Railway. After that it worked on the Bala Lake Railway as "Dryw Bach", and is now owned by the Vale of Rheidol Railway. Peter Pan worked with Pixie in Devon. It was purchased in 1972 by Graham Hall who found the locomotive in a back garden in Bromsgrove and sometimes operates at the Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway. Lorna Doone is now preserved by the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery and is currently at the Amerton Railway, operational. Also at the Amerton Railway is new build Wren "Jennie", built by the Hunslet Engine Company in 2008. In 2010, the Hunslet Engine Company completed the last Wren "Thomas Wicksteed" for the Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London. Two worked on the Camber Railway in the Falkland Islands
Sirdar		0-4-0T	6.5 tons	Two of three locomotives being built for Allan Alderson and Company of Cairo for use during the Nile Barrage construction in Egypt were diverted to the British War Office in November 1899, for use by the Royal Engineers in a siege park in the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek during the Second Boer War. Of the 58 of this class built only 2 are known to survive. No 1158 of 1917 "Diana" privately owned in the UK, and returned to working order in 2015, after 65 years out of use. The second is 652 "Hope", a modified Sirdar, which is classed as a National Monument in Namibia.
Tattoo		0-4-2ST	6.5 tons (8.5 tons)	Three examples exist in the UK, all operational: Stanhope (1917) on the Apedale Valley Light Railway; Talyllyn Railway No.4 Edward Thomas (1921); and Corris Railway No.7 (2005); at least two survive out of service in Namtu, Burma at the Burma Mines Railway.[2][3] The class was built with either outside frames (such as Stanhope) or inside frames (such as Edward Thomas).
Darwin			8.8 tons (10.9 tons)	[citation needed]
Huxley		0-4-2T		At least one survives in working order on the Burma Mines Railway.[4] Joan on the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway has a Huxley boiler carried on a modified Matary/Barreto chassis.
Skylark			10 tons	Formerly used on Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway and Snailbeach District Railways.[5] A few survive at a sugar mill in Mauritius. Lukee operates at a tourist railway in Red Cliffs, Australia.
Joffre		0-6-0T	8.5 tons (10.5 tons)	named after Joseph Joffre; the Joffre class of 70 locomotives was a French Decauville design built by KS under contract during the Great War. Six of the class are known to have survived, one in Africa and five re-imported into the UK; these include Axe on the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway and ones being restored for the Teifi Valley Railway, West Lancashire Light Railway, and the Apedale Valley Light Railway.[6]
Haig			8.5 tons (10.5 tons)	named after Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig; the Haig class was developed from the Joffre as a result of parts being left unused at the end of the Great War. Two examples survive in New Zealand (one at Ocean Beach Railway in Dunedin, the other at MOTAT in Auckland) and one – Sergeant Murphy – on the Teifi Valley Railway
Brazil		0-4-2ST	10.6 tons (13.6 tons)	Several examples survive, including Excelsior on the Great Whipsnade Railway and three locos (Premier, Leader & Melior) of the Sittingbourne & Kemsley Light Railway
Waterloo			15 Tons	[citation needed]
Matary or Barreto (both names used)		0-6-2T	13 tons (17 tons)	At least one original example survives, Superior on the Great Whipsnade Railway. Joan on the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway has a modified Matary/Barreto chassis and a Huxley boiler.

Kerr, Stuart had a large joiners shop and a significant passenger coach construction business. They were therefore very well placed to build steam railmotors. Their first was a diminutive 2 ft (610 mm) gauge saloon for the Maharajah of Gwalior in 1904 followed by a batch of 12 standard gauge railcars in 1905, six for the Taff Vale Railway, two for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, two for the Great Western Railway, one for the Great Indian Peninsula Railway^[7] and one for the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway.^[8][9] The last two in Indian gauge. The GWR gave a repeat order in 1906 for a further 12 slightly more powerful units. The Mauritius Government Railways ordered one in 1907.^[10] The largest rail motor order was for 15 from the Italian State Railways.

• See also Kerr Stuart steam railmotor (one-off, built 1912, for Victorian Railways)

 

In addition to their standard designs, Kerr Stuart accepted orders to build to customers' own designs. From 1900, they built 0-4-0T locobrake for the São Paulo Railway 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm) gauge cable incline between Paranapiacaba and Piaçagüera. Six of them are preserved.^{[citation needed]}

Narrow-gauge 0-4-0T 652 built in 1899 worked in the docks at Walvis Bay, Namibia until the 1950s and is now preserved in a purpose-built glass-windowed display hut in the forecourt of Walvis Bay station.^{[citation needed]}

Between 1903 and 1904 they produced a 4-6-0 design for several Irish 3 ft (914 mm) gauge lines. A 4-6-2T version was built for the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway.^{[citation needed]}

A large 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge 0-6-6-0 Meyer followed in 1904. Five American style bar-framed 2-8-0 tender locomotives were built for the 3 ft (914 mm) gauge Interocianic and Mexican Eastern Railways. In May 1910 they built a 2 ft (610 mm) gauge "modified Fairlie" for service in Madras - two 0-4-2T locomotives permanently coupled back to back. They received a repeat order for this combination.^{[citation needed]}

In 1910 a class of four 4-2-2 express passenger locomotives designed by E. J. Dunstan were produced for the Shanghai Nanking Railway. In service these locomotives proved to be faster, smoother running, and more economicalthan the similar 4-4-0 engines on the same line.^{[citation needed]}

 

The company received several orders from the 2 ft (610 mm) gauge Gwalior Light Railway in India. This included four large 2-8-2 tender locomotives in 1928.^{[citation needed]}

Six superheated 4-8-0 mixed traffic locomotives built in 1929 were the last of a series of 4-4-0 and 4-6-0s built for the Buenos Aires Central Railway of Argentina.^{[citation needed]}

After the First World War, Kerr, Stuart received a number of large orders from the British mainline railway companies who were seeking to replace obsolete equipment with their own standard designs. In 1920 the Metropolitan Railway ordered eight superheated 4-4-4T passenger locomotives for the Aylesbury service. Between 1925 and 1927 the London Midland and Scottish Railway ordered fifty standard class 4F 0-6-0 goods locomotives and between 1929 and 1930 the Great Western Railway ordered 25 GWR 5700 Class 0-6-0PTs.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1920s a number of diesel locomotives were built. These were available with two or three axles for various track gauges. The engines were by McLaren-Benz in 2-cylinder (30 hp), 4-cylinder (60 hp) or 6-cylinder (90 hp) form. Transmission was mechanical and final drive was by roller chains.^[11]

They were very successful even though technology moved on quickly. Further development was stopped when Kerr, Stuart's went into receivership, but the Hunslet range of diesel locomotives was based on these. At least 3 Kerr, Stuart diesel locomotives have survived into preservation but none is in original condition having been given different engines.

 

On 17 April 1930 a petition calling for the company to be wound up compulsorily was presented in the High Court (Chancery Division) by the Midland Bank.^[12] At a hearing held on 8 May 1930 this petition was withdrawn on settlement of an £8,000 guarantee.^[13] However, the sale of the works to George Cohen, Sons & Co Ltd was announced in August 1930; a skeleton staff was employed to complete contracts in progress.^[14] Another winding-up petition was presented on 10 September 1930 and an order was made on 14 October.^[15] At the creditors' meeting held on 14 November Herbert Langham Reed, the company's chairman and managing director,^[16] attributed the failure of the company to the locking up of capital in the Peninsular Locomotive Company, registered in India 1921 to build locomotives (Kerr, Stuart held 80% of the capital and loaned £78,000), the [April] winding-up petition, which had resulted in a loss of confidence in the company, and 'to liabilities incurred by the company in supporting other companies'.^[17] Company funds had, apparently, been used to finance a company called Evos Sliding Doorways. This company's failure had triggered the Midland Bank petition.^[18] In LTC Rolt's autobiography "The Landscape Trilogy" it is also alleged that the company secretary was discovered to have committed suicide in Kerr, Stuart's London offices, and a large quantity of papers was found to have been burnt in the fireplace.^[19] The firm's goodwill (designs, spare parts, etc.) was bought by the Hunslet Engine Company.

Some locomotives were built by W. G. Bagnall to Kerr, Stuart designs, a result of the chief Kerr, Stuart draughtsman, F. H. B. Harris, and a number of other Kerr, Stuart staff being employed by Bagnall's. These locomotives include examples of the Haig and Matary classes.

The last steam locomotive built in Britain for industrial use, was a Hunslet built Brazil class engine in 1971. This locomotive is now running on the private Statfold Barn Railway.

The Corris Railway commissioned a new locomotive based on the "Tattoo" design of its original No.4 (KS 4047 of 1921) and this was privately built over a ten-year period and went into service in 2005 as No.7.

Wilbert Awdry based the character of Peter Sam on a Kerr Stuart Tattoo in The Railway Series.

• Horsman, Geoffrey (December 1964). "The Kerr Stuart Wren Class". The Industrial Railway Record (5 & 6): 85–99.
• L.T.C. Rolt, A Hunslet Hundred, David & Charles, 1964, (Kerr, Stuart & Company – pages 86–101).

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kerr, Stuart and Company locomotives.

• Industrial Railway Record – Kerr Stuart "Wren" class