Catalogue description Bow Locomotive Works photographic collection

This collection covers only the period when the North London Railway owned the works. It includes fine photographs of engines and rolling stock under construction and on completion, views of workshops, offices and staff and scenes at Poplar docks and Broad Street Station; also photographic copies of signalling diagrams.

The collection is listed. Reference prints of the entire collection are available for consultation in the Museum's Reading Room on request.

North London Railway, Bow Locomotive Works

• Railway transport
• Transport engineering

Bow Locomotive Works was established by the North London Railway in 1853. The site was initially a carriage and wagon workshop but in 1863 the first locomotive was completed at the works, and from then on all the North London's engines were constructed at Bow. In its day one of the most sophisticated workshops in Britain, Bow built its last engine in 1906, although repair work continued. In 1908 the North London Railway was taken over by the LNWR, and Bow Works serviced a wider range of locomotives, a role it kept following the grouping of 1923 when the LMS took control. British Railways engines were serviced at Bow until 1960, when the work was transferred to Derby.