The Clayton Equipment Company Ltd was founded in 1931 by Stanley Reid Devlin. Devlin traded from offices at International Combustion Ltd, Sinfin Lane, Derby as Clayton Equipment, until the outbreak of the Second World War. The company ran a factory producing war materials, and in 1945, Clayton responded to the huge shortage of industrial goods by producing general and structural steelwork, farm buildings, conveyors, elevators and submerged ash conveyors. By 1946 the company had expanded sufficiently to acquire new premises at the Record Works in Hatton, Derbyshire, where the large site allowed the company to continue to develop as a business. New workshops and offices were erected and machinery installed to help build a wide variety of locomotives and industrial equipment that were exported to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Poland and Korea. A number of diesel electric locomotives were also made for the domestic market, as British Railways began their modernisation program. International Combustion Holdings Ltd acquired a 100% shareholding of Clayton in 1957, but the company continued to operate autonomously as an entirely self-contained and self-supporting unit. In 1962 the company focused on designing and building a wide range of flameproof locomotives for British coal mines. With the decline of the British coal mining industry, the company diversified to tunnelling and construction for the overseas market. Ownership of Clayton changed hands several times over the next thirty years, during which time Clayton established itself as a market leader in underground rail haulage solutions. International Combustion was acquired by Clarke Chapman Ltd of Gateshead in 1974 and in 1979 the organisation merged with Reyroll Parsons of Newcastle to form a new company called Northern Engineering Industries. In March 2005, Clayton Equipment once again became an independent company and immediately entered a highly successful period of independent trading. The company moved from the Hatton site to Centrum 100 business park, Burton upon Trent in 2006. Today, the future for Clayton Equipment remains firmly with mining and tunnelling locomotives.

In 1910 the state-owned South African Railways and Harbours (SAR&H) organisation was created, after the four colonies of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State were amalgamated into the new Union of South Africa. In 1916, SAR&H took over the activities of the Central South African Railways, the Cape Government Railways and the Natal Government Railways. In 1924 the last privately owned railway line in South Africa was taken over by SAR&H; the New Cape Central Railway between Worcester and Voor Bay. In 1920 electrification of South Africa’s railways was completed, and in 1924 the first electric test train ran between Ladysmith and Chieveley in Natal. In 1950 the first portion of the new Johannesburg station was opened and construction was completed on the huge workshops complex at Koedoespoort. In 1960, diesel locomotives were introduced on a large scale to SAR&H. In 1981, SAR&H changed its name to South African Transport Services (SATS) and took on South Africa’s railway, harbour, road transport, and aviation and pipeline operations.

In 1929 Vickers Ltd and Cammell Laird merged their rolling stock activities in a new company, the Metropolitan-Cammell Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company Ltd with Vickers and Cammell Laird each holding 50% of the shares of the new company. Following the Second World War, the company manufactured carriages for the railways of the world, including UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, Jamaica, and Egypt. In addition, the company manufactured mineral wagons, diesel multiple units and locomotives. However, over this period of sustained high output, international industrial development together with reductions in home market demand as orders were fulfilled, led to the necessity to reduce capacity and in 1962 the Saltley Works were closed and eventually the whole enterprise was concentrated at the Midland Works offices at Leigh Road, Washwood Heath. In the 1970s Metro-Cammell specialised in the design and construction of rapid transit vehicles for customers such as London Underground, Tyne and Wear Metro, Hong Kong Mass Transit Corporation and the Kowloon Canton Railway Corporation. They also built Maglev vehicles for Birmingham Airport, diesel multiple units for BR and Mk IV coaches for BR. In May 1989 the Laird Group sold their transportation interests to GEC Alsthom and Metro-Cammell became part of the new Anglo-French Power Generation and Transportation Group. This led to involvement in the construction of the Eurostar trains for the Channel Tunnel project. The name Metro Cammell disappeared forever in 1998 when the owners floated the company under the name Alstom.