P.T.Tennant

Patrick Theodore Tennant (1861-1942) was a railway engineer from Springburn, Glasgow.

Bio
He worked for a variety of railway companies, firstly as boiler engineer at the Partick and Paisley Railway (PPR), before moving to the Glasgow and Selkirk Railway (GSR) to fulfill the role of Assistant Locomotive Superintendent, before leaving that company in 1899 to follow his younger brother K. R. Tennant to Merseyside, where he became Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Birkenhead Junction Railway. He retired from the BJR in 1921 and moved to Cumbria, where he remained until his death in 1942.

Partick and Paisley Railway 1882-1890
Tennant's first designs for the PPR were rejected by the Locomotive Superintendent Ernest Grace, and were for a single driver tender locomotive and a small, 0-4-0ST. Tennant instead took to working on boilers at the company's Glebe Street works, before leaving in 1890 to take up the post of Assistant Locomotive Superintendent at the GSR

Glasgow and Selkirk Railway 1890-99
Once at the GSR Tennant took up drafting locomotives, the first being his rejected single driver, which became the GSR's class A2. Tennant also undertook an organisation of GSR stock, devising a new classification system for the locomotives, as well as changing the livery scheme, from a lined black that adorned all locomotives, he introduced gamboge and umber to the company's locomotives, which was first worn by his 'single' No.24, when he was trialling the new paintwork. He painted six of his A2 class in various liveries, and eventually chose that worn by No. 24. He also had constructed a class of 12 0-6-2T locomotives, which became the mainstay of the secondary passenger traffic on the GSR. The GSR B Class was another Tennant design, his 0-6-0 standard good locomotive, and it is believed he was in the process of designing an express locomotive for the railway, which by this point had extended to Peebles, becoming the Glasgow, Selkirk and Peebles Railway (GSPR), when he was replaced as Assistant Superintendent by Charles Heriot, who had been his assistant since 1895. Tennant was to move up to the position of Chief Superintendent, but turned down the offer and instead chose to follow his younger brother Keir to Merseyside, where he had taken up the post of CME of the Central Wirral Railway.