No 6387The End
The run-down
How the works thinned through the 1950s, and what the men saw coming before the letter arrived.
Gorton Locomotive Works · Openshaw · Manchester
The Time Book
Every man was booked on. Every engine was numbered.
This site reads the record of Gorton Locomotive Works the way the works itself kept it: by the shops where the engines were made, by the trade a boy was given, by the product that left the erecting shop, and by the last entries nobody wanted to write.
Four bookings that made the book
- 1848
Booked on. The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne & Manchester Railway opens its new works at Openshaw, on land Richard Peacock chose beside the Ashton canal.
- 1923
Grouped. The Great Central becomes part of the LNER; the works keeps erecting engines for a bigger company.
- 1948
Nationalised. The book is ruled by British Railways; the men stay, the ownership line changes again.
- 1963
Booked off. The works closes. The last entries are the ones nobody wanted to write.
Latest units out of the shops
8 / 14 entriesNo 6233The End
The record, 1848 to 1963
The whole chronology of Gorton Works in one entry, the spine the rest of the book hangs on.
No 6042The Engines
Beyer, Peacock next door
Who Beyer, Peacock were, why their foundry stood next to the works, and what the two Gortons built between them.
No 5923The Engines
The engine that carried the name
Why the 9N became the Gorton Tank, what the class was built for, and what survives of it.
No 5860The Engines
What the works built
What classes of engine came out of Gorton's shops, and how the product book changed with each owner.
No 5630The Trade
The roll call
What a roll call is for, how the old site kept Gorton's, and why a list of names is the truest record a works leaves.
No 5574The Trade
The day and the wage
How a working day at the Tank was measured, and what the wage meant inside it.
The Shops
The bays and benches where a works made engines: erecting, machine, boiler, smithy and the shed.
No 5309The Shops
The shed and the canal
Why the works was called the Tank, what the canal depot did, and how water and land decided the site in 1848.
No 5233The Shops
The boiler shop and the smithy
What the boiler makers and smiths made, how the loudest trades worked, and what a riveted boiler asked of the men who built it.
No 5117The Shops
The machine shop
What the machine shop made, how it was organised, and why it was where the works taught its own.
The Trade
The apprenticeship, the trades a boy was given, the day and the wage.
No 5518The Trade
The trades a boy was given
A plain map of the trades inside a locomotive works, and the quiet way a boy's trade was chosen for him.
No 5462The Trade
The five years
How a boy became an apprentice at Gorton, what the five years contained, and what they were for.
The Engines
What the works built, what it repaired, and the tank engine that carried its name.
The End
The run-down, the closure of 1963, the demolition and what is still standing.
The whole roster
14 units- No 6451 What is still standing
- No 6387 The run-down
- No 6233 The record, 1848 to 1963
- No 6042 Beyer, Peacock next door
- No 5923 The engine that carried the name
- No 5860 What the works built
- No 5630 The roll call
- No 5574 The day and the wage
- No 5518 The trades a boy was given
- No 5462 The five years
- No 5309 The shed and the canal
- No 5233 The boiler shop and the smithy
- No 5117 The machine shop
- No 5042 The erecting shop
Books kept at other desks
Entries written elsewhere on subjects the book does not cover, each one read before it was shelved here.
Before a works stood on the land there was a survey, and the sheet that drew it survives at the map that recorded the ground first, a desk that keeps old cartography the way this book keeps the shops.
A works also ran on what its men ate between bookings, and the ledger a canteen keeps shows the same rule the time book shows: an institution is what its kitchen served on an ordinary day.
Not every record is a register; a memory kept in seventeen syllables proves that the shortest entry can carry a whole campaign, which is why the book trusts the one-line roll call as much as the history.
Greenock counted its yards the way Gorton counted its shops, and the chamber that counted the yards keeps the institutional record of a working town on the other side of the border.
A congregation keeps its people the way a works kept its men, and the roll a congregation kept in Waco reads like our roll call: names, years and what each one did for the place.