Glasgow & South Western Railway Manson '381' class 4-6-0 No. 505. Built at Kilmarnock in January 1910 as G&SWR No.119, re-numbered to 505 in 1919 and withdrawn in November 1931 as LMS 14666. Passing Ibrox in fine style, this express is on a Girvan to St. Enoch working in 1920. The seventeen James Manson '381' class 4-6-0s were damned by one observer with faint praise as being "competent at times". Even if this had been a fair appraisal, the tinkerings of his successor Robert Whitelegg served only to make them genuinely mediocre. The LMS regarded virtually all G&SWR locomotives as 'non-standard' and withdrew them within ten years. As a curious aside, in all my researches I have yet to find a photograph of James Manson. Over to you folks...

© Steve Armitage Archive