Polunnio was originally created to preserve and publish the history of the Westinghouse Brake & Signal Company of London and Chippenham. The company traces it roots back to the origin of both railway signalling through its founder John Saxby, and railway braking through George Westinghouse.
Over the years Saxby’s company of 1863 joined with many other specialists in the UK, and at the start of the 20th Century with the Westinghouse Brakes company, founded in London in 1881.
Ever since then WB&S, its predecessors and its successors have been industry leaders in very specific technology. This page has a number of resources and links that anyone interested in the companies may find useful.
The former WB&S companies
Companies that have been part of the WB&S organisation rooted in the UK include:
Davenset/Partridge Wilson, Douglas (Kingswood), Dutton & Co, Evans O’Donnell, Gresham & Craven, McKenzie & Holland, Saxby & Farmer, The Railway Signal Company, WR Sykes, Westinghouse Brakes, Westinghouse Signals, Westinghouse Systems and Westcode.
WB&S successors
Most of the signalling companies have been consolidated over the years, now being part of Siemens Mobility. Siemens has recently opened a new railway technology centre in Chippenham, Wiltshire in the west of England, continuing the legacy of the company which is unbroken since 1894 in the town.
Westinghouse Brakes is now Knorr Bremse, another strong, successful company with its UK base in Wiltshire.
Many of the other successor companies and spin-offs continue to thrive.
Research resources
Those interested in learning more about the WB&S companies and its products have a wealth of potential sources of information. These include:
Chippenham Museum – holding an extensive collection of photos, brochures, documents and artefacts, largely focused on Westinghouse in the town.
Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre – with a large collection of drawings on microfiche and paper, documents and other Westinghouse documents, often related to work further afield. W&SHC also holds much of the nationally important GWR archive.
Kidderminster Railway Museum – has a huge collection of Westinghouse photography, much of it at very high resolution on glass slides. A portion of these have been digitised.
Liverpool Central Library – who hold the archive specifically related to The Railway Signal Co Ltd of Fazakerley.
| Documents you may find interesting | |
 | Published in 2010, our second book celebrated the history of Westinghouse Brake & Signal and its predecessor companies from 1894 to 1991. A wide range of photographs give a unique view of the people that have made the company, its predecessors and successors, so special. Although it has been out of print for some years, we have made the book available for anyone to read, just click on the cover to the left (opens in a new tab). |
| For a number of years in the 1940s and 1950s, employees of the WB&S companies could purchase the in-house magazine, Westinghouse Review. This became an incredible record of the combined company in its heyday. The full set of magazines is available at Chippenham Museum, and we are able to share the December 1949 and September 1951 issues here (opens in a new tab). |  |
 | One of the most remarkable achievements of many elements of the Westinghouse Brake & Signal Company in the 1960s stemmed from its involvement in the Victoria line project. Working closely with London Transport and its brilliant, innovative chief engineer, Robert Dell, Westinghouse technology ranging from brake valves to locally-manufactured transistors led to the world’s first automatically driven railway opening in 1968. You can see the company brochure for this remarkable scheme by clicking on the cover image to the left (opens in a new tab). |
Drawing indexes
We are often asked if indexes of Westinghouse drawings are publicly available. Regrettably they aren’t, largely due to the way in which drawing numbers were allocated sequentially rather than in any other way. Whilst Siemens Mobility still holds a huge archive of drawings going back to the early 20th Century, there is no single catalogue. Microfiches of many drawings are held at the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre which can be worth a visit to dig for the information you need.
We at Polunnio are sometimes able to help if you have a particular item or product you are looking for – but only if you know with a fair degree of accuracy when it was created, or ideally have a drawing number.
Finally, through the hard work of volunteers over the years, we do have two indexes we can share. These are for the WR Sykes company drawings, and for the early McKenzie & Holland ‘W’ series of drawings, before they were fully absorbed into the Westinghouse empire.
These files can be viewed and downloaded by clicking the links to the left.
Power frame register
Westinghouse Brake & Signal used a combination of technologies to rapidly develop signalling and control for railways around the world. Mechanical, electrical and electro-mechanical systems were used to create some extremely large systems, controlling extensive areas of complex railways.
We produced the second edition of ‘A hundred years of speed with safety’, the centennial history of the company in 2014, and Appendix 1 to the book gave the list of the power frames of each type, with their size and date of construction. Running from 1897 to 1961, this list demonstrates the reach and capability of the company.
To help those researching topics related to these power frames, we have made that appendix available here (opens in a new tab).
