Barton Wright arrives
By 1875 the Board had decided to put their house in order and William Barton Wright was appointed as Locomotive Superintendent.
He saw the locomotive stock was in a poor state and introduced a basic range of designs using standard and interchangeable parts, together with much improved maintenance and shed facilities. The company did not have the manufacturing capacity at the time, but his knowledge of commercial loco builders was excellent from his previous post in Indian railways and so the first new machines came from such companies as Kitson of Leeds, Sharp Stewart, and Beyer Peacock of Manchester.
Barton Wright added 450 new locos to the company's stock, all of which were a dramatic improvement on the previous sorry collection. His designs were of the 0-4-4T, 0-6-0, 0-6-2T and 4-4-0 types.
The example below is Sharp Stewart built 0-4-4T of 1886, No.230:
It was Barton Wright who introduced the well-known black loco livery, lined in red and white (red only for goods engines), around 1880, which endured to the end of the company's existence.
In 1886 he tendered his resignation, later returning to acting as a consultant to the railways of India. His work had a profound effect on the company and included the instigation of the new Horwich works, the L&Y's main locomotive production and repair facility to replace the ageing and inadequate Miles Platting works.
His successor, and the man who completed the rise of the company into the realms of those whose locos were worthy of note and was responsible for the great success of Horwich, was John (later Sir John) Aspinall.
