Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company

The Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company (BRC&W) was a railway locomotive and carriage builder, founded in Birmingham, England and, for most of its existence, located at nearby Smethwick, with the factory divided by the boundary between the two places. The company was established in 1854.
Production.
BRC&W made not only carriages and wagons, but a range of vehicles, from aeroplanes and military gliders to buses, trolleybuses and tanks. Nevertheless, it is as a builder of railway rolling stock that the company is best remembered, exporting to most parts of the new and old worlds. It supplied vehicles to all four of the pre-nationalisation "big four" railway companies (LMS, SR, LNER and GWR), British Rail, Pullman (some of which are still in use) and Wagons-Lits, plus overseas railways with diverse requirement including Egypt, India, Iraq, Malaya, Mandate Palestine, South Africa and Nigeria. The company even built, in 1910, Argentina's presidential coach, which still survives, and once carried Eva Perón. Before World War II, the company had built steam-, petrol- and diesel-powered railcars for overseas customers, not to mention bus bodies for Midland Red, and afterwards developed more motive power products, including BR's Class 26, Class 33 (both diesel) and Class 81 (electric) locomotives. Examples of all three types are preserved.
Wartime production.
The company built hospital trains during the Second Boer War. Handley Page Type O bombers and Airco DH.10 Amienss were built in World War I.
During World War 2, the company had a major impact on tank production as one of the many companies building the A10 Cruiser tank, Valentine tank, Churchill tank, Cromwell tank and Challenger tank). They led the design and production of the Cromwell tank in liaison with Rolls Royce and Rover on the Meteor engine.
The company also built Hamilcar gliders in 1939-1945.
Locomotives.
Some of the locomotives and multiple units built by the company are listed below:
Closure.
In the years before 1963, the company had built an extensive number of locomotives, diesel multiple unit trains, and Underground cars, but it then became apparent that fewer rolling stock orders were to be expected, and the company restructured itself as an industrial landlord and financing business. The self-funded main line locomotive prototype "Lion" was a particular disappointment. Powered by a Sulzer diesel engine, it was pitted against another self-funded prototype, "Falcon", built by Brush at Loughborough, which had twin Maybach engines. After trials, British Railways preferred the BRCW approach, but ordered them to be built by Brush Traction, and they became British Rail Class 47.
In June 2014, the company was reformed as a not-for-profit organisation, to reconstruct locomotives from the 1960s that had been lost to scrap, including D0260 "Lion". , the company had identified an area of the old South Works site that would provide a suitable location for its headquarters. Other sites, which might prove to be better suited to the company's requirements, were also being evaluated.