Neilson & Co.

Neilson and Co. — later Neilson Reid and Co. — was one of the three great Glasgow locomotive builders that amalgamated in 1903 to form the North British Locomotive Company, the largest locomotive manufacturer in the British Empire. Founded in 1836 by Walter Neilson and James Mitchell, the firm operated successively from Hyde Park Street in central Glasgow and from 1861 from the purpose-built Hyde Park Works in the railway engineering district of Springburn — the same district that also housed Cowlairs Works and the Sharp Stewart works that would eventually join Neilson in the NBL amalgamation.

Neilson's output encompassed a wide range of locomotive types for British and international customers: the Caledonian Railway, the North British Railway, and the smaller Scottish railways were regular customers, as were railways in India, Argentina, Belgium, and across the British Empire. The firm built batches of Francis Webb's Coal Tank for the LNWR and contributed to several wartime locomotive contracts. By the 1890s the Hyde Park Works employed several thousand men, making Neilson one of the larger engineering employers in Glasgow.

In 1903 Neilson Reid amalgamated with Sharp, Stewart and Co. of Atlas Works, Springburn, and Dübs and Co. of Polmadie to form the North British Locomotive Company — at formation the largest locomotive builder in the British Empire with a combined capacity of over 600 locomotives per year. The Neilson Hyde Park Works became one of NBL's three principal Springburn manufacturing sites, continuing in production until NBL's closure in 1962 ended Glasgow's role as a world locomotive manufacturing centre.