Cowlairs Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Works, atCowlairs inSpringburn, an area in the north-east ofGlasgow,Scotland, was built in 1841 for theEdinburgh and Glasgow Railway and was taken over by theNorth 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 forClass 170 trains byFirst ScotRail.

The first few locomotives were bought in, but in 1844,William Paton produced the0-6-0Hercules numbered 21 andSamson numbered 22. The two locomotives were used for trials as banking engines on the 1 in 42 Cowlairs incline that started as soon as the trains left Queen Street station. The two 0-6-0s were two of the world's most powerful locomotives at the time; so powerful that it was said that they caused severe damage to the track and the lining of the tunnel. The trials that began in 1844 went on until 1847 when they were stopped and the two locomotives were sold off. From then until 1909, the incline used cable haulage to assist trains; banking resumed in 1909 and continued until the withdrawal of type 2 diesels around 1980.

After the NBR amalgamated into theLondon and North Eastern Railway at the 1923Grouping, new production finished, except for boilers and castings, such as brake blocks.

DuringWorld War II, like theNorth British Locomotive Company, both Cowlairs andSt. Rollox joined in the war effort producing, among other things,Airspeed Horsa gliders for theD Day airborne assault. Cowlairs also produced 200,000 bearing shells forRolls-Royce Merlin engines.

Atnationalisation, intoBritish Railways in 1948, most of the work was transferred toHorwich railway works.

Cowlairs closed in 1968, the work transferring to the otherBritish Rail Engineering Limited site atSt. Rollox railway works.

The former site of the Eastfield Running Sheds was redeveloped in 2005 and is once again in use as a maintenance depot forClass 170 trains run byFirst ScotRail.

A new £200 millionNetwork Rail signalling centre and maintenance depot was opened in December 2008 on the former site of Cowlairs carriage sidings, which were located opposite the works on the other side of the main railway line. A total of 450 staff relocated to the new facilities. The new signalling centre replaced the previous 45-year-old system. The maintenance depot replaced existing bases, including Cathcart, Lenzie and Shields Road.

The former site of the main Cowlairs works itself was converted into the Carlisle Street Business Park and Cowlairs Industrial Estate, which has been partly occupied by aBowmore Whisky bottling plant and some other light industrial units.

There are 2 preserved steam locomotives built by Cowlairs.

• NBR G Class 0-4-0ST No. 42 of 1887, preserved at theBo'ness and Kinneil Railway
• NBR K Class 4-4-0 No. 256 of 1913, preserved at theRiverside Museum

• Larkin, E.J., Larkin, J.G. (1988).The Railway Workshops of Great Britain 1823-1986. Macmillan Press.

55°52′58″N4°14′22″W / 55.882675°N 4.239416°W /55.882675; -4.239416

• Railway workshops in Great Britain
• North British Railway
• Locomotive manufacturers of the United Kingdom
• Rail transport in Scotland
• Companies of Scotland
• 1841 establishments in Scotland
• Springburn

• Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas
• Use dmy dates from February 2015
• Use British English from February 2015
• Coordinates on Wikidata