Cowlairs railway works

A Cowlairs production plate on a North British Railway Company engine
The former Cowlairs Locomotive Works at Inverurie Street, Springburn in April 1970.
Site of the former Cowlairs Locomotive Works at Inverurie Street, Springburn in July 2009 (Carlisle St on the left was extended north through the former site).

Cowlairs Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Works, at Cowlairs in Springburn, an area in the north-east of Glasgow, Scotland, was built in 1841 for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway and was taken over by the North British Railway (NBR) in 1865. It was named after the nearby mansion of Cowlairs, with both locomotive and carriage & wagon works. It was also the first works in Britain to build locomotives, carriages and wagons in the same place. It was located on the western side of the Glasgow-Edinburgh mainline at Carlisle Street.[1]

In September 1904, the Eastfield Running Sheds were built on the other side of the Glasgow-Edinburgh mainline, just to the north of the Cowlairs complex, to maintain locomotives and to free-up more engineering space at Cowlairs Works. They were closed in 1994 but the depot site was redeveloped in 2005 and is once again in use as a maintenance facility for Class 170 trains by First ScotRail.

  1. ^ "Explore georeferenced maps - Map images - National Library of Scotland". Explore georeferenced maps. National Library of Scotland. Retrieved 13 October 2018.