Caledonian Railway Locomotives: The Formative Years by David Hamilton

The Caledonian Railway was a major company. Its lines spread from Carlisle to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and it partnered the London & North Western Railway in operating the West Coast route, the first to run through trains from London to Scotland. Within Scotland, it served much of the industrial central belt, carrying significant volumes of coal and iron from a multitude of small mines and works. This required a large stock of goods and mineral locomotives, whilst passenger trains varied from expresses linking the major cities to humble tanks operating rural branch lines on relaxed schedules. The first lines of the Caledonian Railway opened in the late 1840s but some of its later absorbed constituents dated from the 1830s. The locomotives varied from the 8ft singles to the humble shunting tank. The Caledonian was at the forefront of several developments in locomotive design as it evolved to meet these needs. In this book, the author describes all the locomotives built for.