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Kevin Jones' Steam Index

Woolwich Arsenal, Woolwich

Lowe covers Woolwich Arsenal like any other manufacturer of locomotives noting how manufacture was started there in an endeavour to avoid large scale unemployment at the end of WW1. The SECR N class was selected (it had nearly been accepted by ARLE as one of a series of standard designs). Manufacture started but no purchasers could be found. Fifty were eventually acquired by the Southern Railway. Sets of parts were also supplied to the Metropolitan Railway and to the Great Southern Railway, and some went to Romania.

Lowe quotes contemporary comment:

In the Engineer dated 3 June, 1921, it was stated: 'The attempt which has been made with the object of averting unemployment, to con vert a portion of Woolwich Arsenal into a permanent locomotive factory has not been as successful as some people had anticipated. In his report on the annual accounts of the ord nance factories for the year 1919-20, Sir H.J. Gibson the Comptroller states that the manufacture of locomotives was undertaken as part of the peace time programme and work for various railway companies amounting to £255,000 was carried out. The report adds that the Ministry of Munitions informed the Treasury when seeking sanction for capital expenditure that it had not been possible at the close of the year under review to arrange for the disposal of surplus locomotives or indeed to fix a price for them. It is understood that no sale of the locomotives has down to the present time been effected. The general question of the financial arrangements in connection with the manufacture of locomotives and other products since the ordnance factories were transferred to the War Office is under consideration and also that of putting the factories in a position to act as sub-contractors to engineering firms.

Again in the Engineer dated 5 January, 1923 it was stated 'there were fifty uncompleted locomotives at Woolwich which had cost £551,000. The fifty completed ones had cost £780,000. None were sold and were not to be finished, and their parts sold as they lie'. The sale of sets of parts was undertaken by Cohen Armstrong Disposal Corporation.

Middlemass, Tom.The 'Woolworths' — Woolwich Arsenal tentative entry into main line locomotive building. Backtrack, 4, 148-54.
2-6-4T and 2-6-0 for SR (N, N1, K, K1, U, U1); 2-6-0 for MGWR/GSR  (K1, K1A); 2-6-4T for Metropolitan Railway (K). Same writer wrote more general article about Woolwich Arsenal in Railways South East 2, 111.  See letter from Historian of Woolwich Arsenal (page 286) See also colour phot feature in Vol. 19 page 420. See letter by A.R. Nicholls (page 236) which covers several aspects of Southern 2-6-0s, including their nicknames.