William George Beattie

William George Beattie (1841–1918) was a British locomotive engineer who succeeded his father Joseph Hamilton Beattie as Locomotive Superintendent of the London and South Western Railway at Nine Elms in October 1871, holding the post until his resignation in November 1877 — and who designed the Beattie Well Tanks of 1874–75, three of which survived in active service on the Wenford Bridge mineral branch in Cornwall until 1962, nearly ninety years after their construction.

Born at Edinburgh on 13 January 1841, William Beattie was educated at King's College London and worked alongside his father at Nine Elms before inheriting the LSWR's senior locomotive post on Joseph's death in office. His brief tenure of six years produced a modest number of locomotive classes continuing his father's well-tank design tradition, of which the 0298 class 2-4-0WT built in 1874–75 proved extraordinarily durable.

The three surviving 0298 class well tanks — Nos. 30585, 30586, and 30587 — worked the remote Wenford Bridge china clay branch in Cornwall from the late Victorian era through to 1962, their survival attributable to the branch's unique combination of tight curves, weak bridges, and light traffic that prevented any of the LSWR's or Southern Railway's successors from displacing them with more modern power. All three have been preserved, a remarkable outcome for a class designed in the 1870s. Beattie's new 4-4-0 tender engine of 1877 proved less successful, contributing to the LSWR Board's decision to replace him with William Adams. He went into business in London and died at Putney on 19 February 1918.