Metropolitan-Cammell Carriage and Wagon Co
of Saltley, Birmingham
of Leigh Road, Washwood Heath, Birmingham, otherwise known as Metro-Cammell.
1934 Capital reorganisation of the private company Metropolitan-Cammell Carriage, Wagon and Finance Co Ltd; the company would be called Metropolitan-Cammell Carriage and Wagon Co Ltd; the shareholders would continue to be Vickers Ltd and Cammell Laird and Co[1]
WWII 95 percent of the company's work was on special war production. The company had constructed 3,115 tanks and reworked and refitted 1,200 others by the end of 1944, as well as building many bodies for vehicles and other purposes[2]
1951 Patent Shaft and Axletree Co Ltd was nationalised under the Iron and Steel Act; became part of the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain[3]
1956 Patent Shaft and Axletree Co Ltd was purchased from the Holding and Realization Agency by Cammell, Laird and Co (75%) and Metro Cammell (25%)[4].
1961 Owned by Cammell, Laird and Co and Vickers. Works at Saltley, Washwood Heath, Elmdon and Wednesbury. Employs 4,500 persons. Parent of five subsidiaries producing railway locomotives, carriages, wagons, railcars and road passenger vehicles
1961 Designers and manufacturers of railway locomotives, carriages, wagons, railcars and road passenger transport vehicles for world-wide market. 4,500 employees. [5]
1962 The Saltley works was closed
1964 Rubery, Owen and Co took over the Old Park Works at Wednesbury previously used by Metropolitan-Cammell Carriage and Wagon Co[6]
1967 Group administration was concentrated at Washwood Heath.
1969 The Metro Cammell business was renamed Cammell Laird (Metro)
1970 After a financial crisis, the parent company, Cammell Laird, was renamed as Laird Group; it also held 50 percent of the shipbuilding business (the government took on the other 50 percent), as well as the other activities of the former company.
1989 May: the railway business was sold to GEC Alsthom (later Alstom Group).
The last trains to be built at the Washwood Heath plant were the Class 390 "Pendolino" tilting trains for the West Coast Main Line modernisation.
2005 Closure of the Washwood Heath plant