A 25-4-5-0 Passenger Locomotive built by William Beardmore & Co. Ltd, being loaded aboard the S.S. Belfri at the company's slipway at Dalmuir Shipyard, destined for the Bombay, Baroda, and Central India Railway. The locomotive works were adjacent to the shipyard, and assembled locomotives were brought along a rail track about 300 yards long before being loaded onto ships with a 200-ton cantilever crane. Each locomotive weighed 66.6 tons.
The William Beardmore & Co. Ltd works were based around Parkhead Forge in the east end of Glasgow, which was opened in 1837 by Reoch Brothers & Co., then acquired by Robert Napier to make iron parts for the new shipyards in Govan. Following problems with this work, William Beardsmore Snr was brought from Deptford to supervise the site, later becoming a full partner in the enterprise. When he died his part in the partnership was taken over by William Beardsmore Jnr, who founded William Beardmore & Co. Ltd in 1896. The company continued to make armour and guns for ships, branching into aircraft at the start of the First World War, buying out Sentinel Waggon Works, a manufacturer of steam-powered railway locomotives, railcars and road vehicles in 1917, and following the war expanded this business as well as branching into cars, taxis, and motorcycles. Despite this, the Beardmore's struggled with the post-war slump, with a 60% stake in the company being sold to Vickers, who then pulled out again. William Beardmore had his control of the company taken away by the Bank of England, and the various companies were split off and either sold on or wound down. Sir James Lithgow purchased Parkhead Forge and the surrounding iron and steel manufacturies in 1934. The site was nationalised in 1951, then sold on to Firth Brown Steels in 1957, finally closing in 1983.
The S.S. Belfri was built in 1921 by Armstrong, Whitworth & Company, Newcastle, for the purpose of delivering 200 2-8-0 locomotives, also built by by Armstrong, Whitworth & Company, to Belgium. It was later acquired by Christian Smith of Oslo, who used it principally to ship locomotives from Dalmuir around the world. In 1934 it was sold to HCS Coasters Pty. Ltd of Melbourne Australia, who in 1954 sold it on to a company in the Philippines. The vessel is thought to have been scrapped in 1992.
The Bombay, Baroda, and Central India Railway was founded in 1855 to construct a railway between the port of Bombay (now Mumbai) and what was then the independent state of Baroda (now the city of Vadodara in Gujarat State). The work was completed in 1864, and the first trains ran in 1865. The company was purchased by the Government of India in 1905, but continued to operate as an independent company until 1942, when it was incorporated into the Indian State Railway system.
