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0-4-0T Morrison & Mason 3ft gauge contractor's locomotive No.5


picture of 0-4-0T Morrison & Mason 3ft gauge contractor's locomotive No.5 at Bo'ness
The locomotive at Bo'ness carrying the temporary name 'Borrowstounness'.

SRPS Core Collection, acquired 1964. Overhaul in progress.
(British Aluminium Co. "Fair Maid of Foyers"),
Built 1899, Andrew Barclay, Sons & Co., Kilmarnock. Works No.840.
3ft Gauge. Cost when new £475.

The great municipal improvement works built by the late Victorians generally used temporary railways for the movement of materials. Morrison & Mason was a Glasgow contractor, responsible for a range of large scale projects between 1879 and 1925, when the company became a part of Sir William Arrol & Co. Between 1896 and c.1902 the company built the Elan Valley water pipeline between Dolau and Hagley under contract to Birmingham Corporation.

This was the fifth 3ft gauge locomotive which Andrew Barclay, Sons & Co supplied to Morrison & Mason (by 1899 they had also bought six standard gauge Barclay locomotives). No.5 was delivered new to the site at Bucknall in 1899, then on completion of its duties there worked on the Glasgow & South Western Railway Maidens & Dunure Light Railway contract between 1902 and 1906 and later at Ystradfellte Reservoir (near Penderyn), before being sold to C.D.Phillips, engineers of Newport, who carried out a general overhaul before sale in 1916 to the British Aluminium Company (BAC).
Information from: "Industrial Locomotive" Magazine No.114, Industrial Locomotive Society.

BAC had established their aluminium smelting works and associated hydro-electric plant at Foyers in 1895/96, and used a 3ft gauge railway to connect the works with the quayside on Loch Ness. The locomotive, now unofficially named 'The Fair Maid of Foyers', replaced horse haulage, and continued in use for over 40 years.

It received a new boiler, cylinders and pistons in 1938, and new tanks, eccentric sheaves and straps in 1949. The locomotive cylinders are 6 1/2 ins diameter, the wheels 1ft 10ins diameter, and the boiler pressure 120 psi. 'The Fair Maid of Foyers' was donated by the British Aluminium Company.

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