Farnsfield’s Shanks and McEwan Connection

[With thanks to Gill Sarre, Secretary of Farnsfield Local History Society, for providing the images and prompting this article, which can also be found in the current FLHS newsletter. They are an intriguing set of snaps and there may be more to the story than this, so, if anyone can add any more details or correct any misinterpretations, I’d be pleased to hear from them. My account is informed largely by the information written on the back of the photos, so, as the article stands, any assumptions I’ve made that are factually inaccurate are currently down to me.]

This set of six photographs of industrial steam locomotives attracted attention because of the mention of Farnsfield on the back of each picture, and they were subsequently acquired from the online market place that had advertised them. There were also further hand-written clues to what had brought them to “Farnsfield, Nr. Ollerton, Notts”. Each one mentions Shanks and McEwan, one adding “of Glasgow”, another “Farnsfield – Ollerton LMS/LNE contract 1929-1931”, a third “stored following a contract at Farnsfield c. 1939” and finally “to be cut up at Farnsfield 1942”.

Shanks and McEwan Ltd was a Scottish construction company, starting off in 1880 and becoming a prominent civil engineering firm involved with railway construction. It had also developed quarrying interests before settling on environmental services and waste management, including a landfill site at Corby. It still operates today under the name of Renewi, primarily in the Benelux countries.

The photos show the company’s name written across the flank of the engines. This shows that they were owned by the contractors and not built by them. It’s not possible to make out the information on the builders’ plates, which all locomotives carried, usually as oval-shaped brass or cast-iron plates attached to the cab side. The numbers given to the engines would be those describing their position in the company’s own fleet. Numbers 1, 49 and 82 are present and another is named Liverpool, with shots of both sides of that loco included. The engines are described as 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 saddle tanks, the former being the normal way that the size of a locomotive is classified - with reference to its wheel arrangement, and the second being how the engine carries the water it needs, in these cases in a saddle-shaped tank that straddles the boiler. There is a reference to “Peck” next to a number on the other side of the Liverpool engine. I think this refers to a locomotive built by Peckett, a well-known and prolific Bristol-based industrial locomotive manufacturers, though online lists show that the builder’s number given, 564, does not coincide with the date offered for construction of 1897. The smaller locos resemble Peckett’s W4 class.

So, what brought them all to Farnsfield in the first place, only for them to languish there for some time afterwards? Between the world wars the eastern part of the Nottinghamshire coalfield was still being developed and Bilsthorpe pit was due to open in 1928. The London Midland and Scottish Railway and the London North Eastern Railway proposed a new seven-mile-long joint railway line between Ollerton and Farnsfield to take out coal southwards. Using a junction at Farnsfield and opened in 1931, this allowed them to gain access to the existing former Midland Railway route to Southwell, before taking a spur beyond the town to join what we now know as the Castle line at Fiskerton Junction on the edge of the village of Morton.

Shanks and McEwan were presumably contracted to build the line, bringing in their own locomotives to get the job done. What seems to have happened after construction was over is that the engines were no longer needed elsewhere and were allowed to rot slowly in sidings at Farnsfield - of which there were sufficient number to accommodate them - before there were cut up on site in 1942. Perhaps the war effort needed the scrap metal more urgently by then. It’s possible also that the company had already decided on its move towards environmental services and away from civil engineering by that time, so the engines were suddenly surplus to their future requirements after completion of the new link.