World War II
From 1939 the works was mostly concerned with the war effort, becoming involved in the development and production of the Matilda tank. From 1943 large orders were received from the Ministry of Supply for locomotives, 390 Austerity 2-8-0s and fifty Austerity 0-6-0 saddle tanks.
In 1944 the Vulcan Foundry acquired Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns and in 1945 received an order for 120 "Liberation" 2-8-0 locomotives for UNRRA in Europe.
The war had left India's railways in a parlous state and in 1947, with foreign aid, embarked on a massive rebuilding plan. The Vulcan Foundry benefited from orders for XE, XD, and YD 2-8-2s; and ten WG 2-8-2s sub-contracted from the North British Locomotive Company, but the writing was on the wall for all British manufacturers. Not only was the competition fierce from other countries, but India had developed the ability to build its own locomotives.
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“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
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“Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.”
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