Doncaster Works

Doncaster Works, known locally as The Plant, is a railway workshop in Doncaster, England, established by the Great Northern Railway in 1853 to replace its earlier works at Boston and Peterborough. For its first years it handled only repairs and maintenance, and it began building new locomotives from 1867. Under Patrick Stirling it produced the first 875 class locomotive in 1886 and added carriage building, with the first sleeping cars in 1873, the first dining cars in the United Kingdom in 1879 and the first corridor coaches in 1882. Its locomotive output included the Stirling Singles, the Ivatt Atlantics and the Gresley Pacifics, among them Flying Scotsman and Mallard, the world record holder for steam at 126 mph in 1938. By 1913 it employed 4,600 people on 200 acres, and in the Second World War it also built Horsa gliders. The last of 2,228 steam locomotives built there, BR Standard Class 4 number 76114, was completed in 1957, and carriage building ended in 1962. Under British Rail Engineering Limited it built diesel shunters, 25 kV electric locomotives and the Class 56 and Class 58 diesel-electrics. The wagon works passed to RFS Industries in 1987 and to Wabtec in 2000, which still refurbishes carriages on the site.