A 46 class electric locomotive. This locomotive was built in 1956 at Metropolitan Vickers Beyer Peacocks, Yarm Rd, Stockton in the factory now occupied by Visqueen. Photograph and information courtesy of Colin Booth. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
I trying to establish if the Harry Hayton mentioned by Harry Iceton is my Dad. Can anyone give me dates and more info please?
Harry Hayton would be the same age as me age 16 in 1936 we both started our apprentice ship with Ashmores it was he who got me the job with Metro Vickers in 1953 building Diesel loco’s, he was a charge hand and I and my brother in law Joe Sheperd worked together as sheet metal workers until I left to go back to Ashmores at their new site in 1967. Harry had two brothers who worked in Ashmores Bowesfield Lane before the war in 1939; Ducky who left to join the navy and Tommy who I worked with in the boiler yard till I left in 1946 , I lost touch with Harry after leaving Metro Vickers.
Sorry I have just seen your comment hence the late reply
Thank you very much for the reply. My Dad had a twin brother called Tommy and an older brother called Robert or Bob. By 1949 he would have married and had 3 children. 2 girls and a boy. ( my half siblings) I’m sure it must be him.
Re: the Stockton & Darlington Railway milepost. By coincidence I was talking to my father only a couple of days before re-reading this thread, and he told my of the time he was working at Visqueen in the 70’s and found an S&D stone milepost in the factory grounds. He alerted the management to his find, and soon after it was removed for safekeeping. I just hope it didn’t end up as some senior manager’s doorstop!
The short branch from Bowesfield Jct. to Visqueen and Ashmore’s South Works (later Whessoe) was probably once part of the original route of the S&D. Hence the milepost find.
Thanks for clarifying that Alan. I was looking at old maps on the Durham County GIS site, and they clearly show the layout of the sidings in the area. It appears that the A66 road runs along the route for a short distance.
The works branch left Bowesfield Junction just after the signal box and headed south-west behind Bowesfield Brickworks and Mount Pleasant Grange and across desolate ground to serve the MV-BP Locomotive Works and Power Gas Corp”s South Works. About halfway along this single track split into three tracks to create the exchange sidings and then recombined. Further south, two separate sidings entered the MV-BP site heading for the non-Yarm Road corners of the factory. The furthest siding joined the far right of the 70 foot turntable at the back of the works, with at least three further sidings entering the works from this southern facility. As K. McG. noted, you can see the turntable imprint from the air, but the course of the branch line is very difficult to detect. The branch line continued to bisect the two works finally serving the more complex internal layout at South Works. References for this comment are Darvill”s excellent article and maps, and BTC data.
Hiya Anon and all other railway contributors, your knowledge of local and wider railway history is one of the features that proves the worth of this site. I am sure that without it a great deal of local history would be lost. As an aside, between where the factory line exited Metro-Vick and the road bridge over the Thornaby-Eaglescliffe line one of the original mileposts for the Stockton and Darlington Railway was discovered in the 1970″s. I don”t know whether it is still in situ or whether it has been relocated to a safer environment.
Kevin McGowan/George Clement: There was definitely a rail connection into the Metro -Vick factory at Stockton, comprising a spur from the Thornaby – Eaglescliffe line near Bowesfield Junction, with a metal gate in the factory boundary fence to allow access. Around 1958-59 the twenty Metro-Vick 1,200 h.p. diesel electric locos built for British Railways could be seen in the area brand new on trial trips, usually to the Leeds area or north to the Tyneside area. I remember D5716 coming through Stockton from the north one afternoon in the spring of 1959 hauling a rake of empty passenger coaches on one such trip.
The mainline runs through a cutting adjacent the factory, but there is no evidence of any earthworks remaining from a former rail connection. So I thought perhaps the connection might have been at the other end of the factory, running from the turntable to the nearby Ashmore sidings.
Hi once again Harry. You mention Jerry Flack as being a manager. He was a senior foreman. The works manager was a Mr Cowan. Other notables being Alan Bell welding foreman, Ronnie Todd bogie shop Foreman, Jack Raine assembly shop foreman, The position later split in 2 by the promotion of Bernard Benyon (he was the fitter I first worked under). Bob Watson maintenance foreman. The machine shop foreman was a Jimmy ?. There was also an electrical foreman who”s name I cant recall. I think Jack also controlled the paint shop. I think the sheety chargehand was Ernie Maslem. Maybe you can throw in a few other names Happy & healthy New Year to all staff & contributers.
Jerry Flack, actually Ronald George Alexander Flack, was my father, born 114 years ago in 1901. Nice to see his name. As a little lad I remember all those names, particularly Alan Bell, Mr Griffiths and Mr Cowan. The name Jerry came from his earlier years when he was an entertainer using the name Jerry Fane.
Hi Kevin Yes the line did connect, not sure where, but a certain fitter had so much time in the back of the book that he would walk into town & go to the movies & return in time to clock off. We had an electric locomotive called The Green Goddess, would go almost to the main line to change lines to get to the opposite end of the factory
I believe that there was a rail link from the Metro works onto the mainline. Although some of the locos were transported by road on a low loader. As I understood at the time, Metro closed down in Stockton and all work was tranferred to their main factory over in the Liverpool area. The factory stood empty for awhile until taken over by Visqueen.
Alan – I have never been able to discover if there was an actual rail conection between the factory and the mainline. Can you confirm this? and if so, where was it? Incidently if you look at the Visqueen site on Google Earth, you can clearly see an impression in the grass to the south of the building, where the turntable used to be.
A history of the Metropolitan Vickers-Beyer Peacock, Bowesfield Locomotive Works, at Stockton from 1949 to 1961, appears in the Industrial Railway Record magazine for March 1997, Vol.148, pages 265-276 by R.D.Darvill. Two maps and several interesting photographs, including some of the rare gas turbine locomotive No. 18100 on the long gone BR-works link line are published, along with information on the works photograph archive. I am not sure if this article is available in Stockton ref.library, although I did send a copy years ago. Another article on the gas turbine locomotive appears in the magazine RAIL for August 1989. I purchased a BTC published, circa 1953, map of the layout of the works in an Oxfordshire second-hand bookshop in the 1990″s. Numerous pictures of the BR D57XX Co-Bo Metro-Vicks under construction at Stockton were on display when the owners exhibited the preserved example at a Crewe Works open day a few years ago.
pictures of 1e that was in use 1924 to 1980
Metro-Vick also built twenty 1,200 hp diesel-electric locomotives for British Railways at their Stockton works in 1958-59. B R, with worsening financial deficits had decided to speed up the 1955 Modernisation Plan and make a dash for the total replacement of steam locomotives, in an effort to reduce operating costs. This meant spreading orders widely so that the demand could be met quickly and ordering in many cases without prototype testing. For a time it seemed that anyone with a diesel design to sell could be assured of an order from B R. The result, more than forty different classes of diesel locos introduced when five would probably have sufficed. The first loco D5700 left the Stockton works on a test run to Leeds in July,1958. Sadly,they were not a successful design and were plagued with engine problems.No further orders were placed. By 1960/61 many of the class were already out of service pending modifications and they ended their lives in the Workington area of Cumberland. By 1968 with the effects of railway closures and rationalisation B R had too many diesels and there was a cull of small, or less successful classes. By 1968 all the Metro-Vick locos had been withdrawn. Some had not even outlasted the steam locos they were built to replace. The fault lay not with Metro-Vick ,Stockton, as the build quality was fine ,but due to the problems with the engines fitted. One member of the class -D5705- did however escape the cutting torch and is preserved as an example of Stockton”s loco building days.
Yes Colin I did work at Metro vickers Beyer Peacock ,I was Boiler maker by trade but worked as a Sheet Metal worker on the locoes untill I left to work in Asmores. The Manager at that time was called Jerry Flack and the manager over the sheet metal workers was called Harry Hayton we served our time together at Ashmores . After the West Australian order was completed I believed they stopped making the locos.In 1986 I emigrated to Perth in Weston Australia and saw one of the locos in the railway station. I was having a good look and the driver came up to me I told him I worked on them in England he then pointed out the name and the year on the side of the loco which had the name and the year it was made in stockton in 1953. Shortly after this same loco was put in the railway museum near were I now live as the railway changed to electric locos
Once again a look at Metro Vics Locos. Did Harry Iceton work on these I wonder. I served my time as an apprentice fitter & turner at Metro Vics from 1951 to 1956. Up to & including 1951 Metro Vics were manufacturing power station equipment, condenser, evaporators & yokes for electric motors. They merged with Beyer Peacocks, (who had traction rights), so becoming Metropolitain Vickers Beyer Peacocks. The sole purpose was to build locomotives. They employed many tradesmen & other workers during that time. Probably around 200 to 400 employees. The work lasted till 1961 when lack of orders resulted in closure.
My father, Edmund Lawson-Brown, came out from England in 1956 to install electric locomotives for the NSW railways. I think this model was the one he was involved with, but I have no details. He was a senior electrical engineer who worked at British Thompson Houston (BTH) in Rugby, England. BTH was associated with Metropolitan Vickers, Met Cammell and others and they later became Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) which was later bought out by General Electric. He spent 3 boring days travelling in a Comet in each direction!! If anyone has any reference to him or the other English engineers of the time, particularly any photos, I would be most grateful if you would email me – Alan.L.Brown@optusnet.com.au. Thank you Alan
There were two early withdrawals – 4620 in 1977 and 4618 in 1989; all of the others were withdrawn between 1990 and 1996. [4620 was involved in two derailments – at Wentworth Falls in 1965 and Granville in 1977, after which it was not repaired]. The book “46 Class Remembered” (ARHS, Sydney, 2002) covers the whole class, with at least one coloured photograph of each class member, plus full technical details of the class. This book also includes coloured shots and technical details of the locally built mainline electric 7100 (originally numbered 4501) for crew training. 7100 is preserved in static condition at the NSW Rail Transport Museum, Thirlmere Five 46″s have been preserved: 4601 – NSWRTM, Valley Heights; 4602 – Dorrigo Steam Railway & Museum; 4615 – Sydney Electric Train Society (operational); 4627 – Rothbury Riot Museum, Newcastle; 4638 – NSWRTM, Thirlmere (operational). My memories of the 46 class include coming home from high school in the early 1960s along the main Western line (Parramatta – Penrith route) with the 46 hauling 8 to 10 end-platform (“Cowboy”) cars on all-stations services. Departure from each stop was preceded by a fairly large purring noise followed by a great jolt throughout the train as the loco took up its task. My other memories include their almost silent passage when working at the old Mt Druitt station in the mid-1960s and a rare occasion in 1965 when a 46-class combined with an AD60 class Beyer-Garratt running bunker first on the 1 in 77 grade through that station with a loaded Sydney-bound freight.
Colin, they actually survived well into the 1990″s being very easy to maintain especially the big 272 motors my father always said he loved rewinding MetVick motors, he worked at Chullora the heavy maitenence shops in Sydney, they actually went to the lengths of removing all the asbestos from the units in the 80″s, the more modern units and their age got the better plus the cost of running elec locos on our system saw them retired along with the modern units. I must admit as a boy i always loved the sight of a 46, even got a ride in one!
46 class locomotives were built towards the end of my apprenticeship. I built the bogies for 4613 as the first major job after I finished my time, prior to doing a stint for Her Majesty in the RAF. Foreman of the bogie shop was Ronnie Todd, chargehand Paddy Mcburney. I wonder just how many ex employees are still around today. I know of a few. 4620 was the locomotive involved in the Granville train disaster in Australia taking some 70 odd lives. They were decommissioned shortly after the disaster. Still a few around in museum”s.