Hugh Smellie

Hugh Smellie (1840–1891) was a Scottish locomotive engineer who served successively as Locomotive Superintendent of the Maryport and Carlisle Railway, the Glasgow and South Western Railway, and briefly the Caledonian Railway — a career that carried him through three rival Scottish railway companies and ended with his sudden death just over a year after taking the Caledonian appointment, an irony given the fierce competition between the G&SWR and Caledonian systems he had served.

Born at Ayr on 14 May 1840, Smellie was apprenticed in the Ayrshire engineering trade and joined the Glasgow and South Western Railway, where he worked his way up through the locomotive department before being appointed Locomotive Superintendent of the Maryport and Carlisle Railway in 1870. He returned to the G&SWR as its Locomotive Superintendent at Kilmarnock Works in 1878, a post he held for twelve years.

Smellie's most significant design for the G&SWR was the 119 Class 4-4-0 of 1886 — an inside-cylinder express locomotive that served the G&SWR's Anglo-Scottish Midland Route services through the Nithsdale valley and over the Galloway hills to Carlisle with competence and reliability. The G&SWR was the Midland Railway's Scottish partner in the Midland Route to Scotland, competing directly with the Caledonian (West Coast) and North British (East Coast) for the London–Glasgow traffic, and Smellie's express engines were an essential part of its competitive position.

In May 1890 Smellie was appointed Locomotive Superintendent of the Caledonian Railway, succeeding Dugald Drummond — a remarkable appointment given his long G&SWR career — but he died suddenly at St Rollox on 19 August 1891 after only fifteen months in the post, before he had made any substantial mark on the Caledonian's locomotive fleet. He was succeeded by John Lambie.