HUGH REID
THE chief managing director and deputy chairman of the North
British Locomotive Company, Limited, is the eldest surviving son of the late Mr.
James Reid, and was born at Manchester in 1860. Mr. Reid, senior, a native of
Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, was then manager to Messrs. Sharp, Stewart & Co., engineers,
Atlas Works, Manchester, but three years later he became a partner in the
business of Neilson & Co., which had just removed from Hydepark Street,
Anderston, to Springburn, and his eldest son accordingly received his education
at Glasgow High School and Glasgow University. He obtained his practical
training in the Hydepark Works, and rapidly developed a natural talent for
engineering. After the retirement of Mr. Neilson in 1878, Mr. Reid, senior,
carried on the business of the firm with the assistance of his four sons till
1893, when he took them into partnership. In the following year he died, and Mr.
Hugh Reid became senior member of the firm then known as Neilson, Reid & Co., of
Hydepark Locomotive Works.
After they came into possession of the business Mr. Reid and
his brothers added largely both to their buildings and plant, and to the number
of men in their employment, and in 1903 an amalgamation was effected between the
Hydepark Works, Springburn, the Queen's Park Works, Polmadie, and the Atlas
Works, Springburn, under the name of the North British Locomotive Company, Ltd.
The united firm to-day employs between 7,000 and 8,000 men, and is the largest
private locomotive-building concern in Europe.
Mr. Reid is a director of the Clydesdale Bank, Limited, and a
Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers, and he was Convener of the Committee
on Machinery and Electric Lighting in connection with the Glasgow Exhibition of
1901. He retired recently, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and the Volunteer
Officers' Decoration, from the Lanarkshire Engineer Volunteers, after
twenty-three years' service. He is a member of the Royal Company of Archers {the
King's Bodyguard for Scotland).
His private hobby is the application of electricity to
engineering, and among his own and his brothers' many benefactions to the city
of Glasgow are the extensive range of glass houses in the Springburn Public
Park, in which has been erected by public subscription a fine statue of his
father, Mr. James Reid, by Mr. Roscombe John, A.R.A.