William Paton Reid was apprenticed to the Cowlairs railway works

Cowlairs railway works

Cowlairs Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Works , at Cowlairs in Springburn, an area in the north-east of Glasgow, Scotland, was built in 1841 for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway and was taken over by the North British Railway in 1865. It was named after the nearby mansion of Cowlairs, with both...

 of the North British Railway

North British Railway

The North British Railway was a Scottish railway company that was absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway at the Grouping in 1923.-History:...

 in 1879 and was Locomotive Superintendent

Chief Mechanical Engineer

Chief Mechanical Engineer and Locomotive Superintendent are titles applied by British, Australian, and New Zealand railway companies to the person ultimately responsible to the board of the company for the building and maintaining of the locomotives and rolling stock...

 from 1903-1919. He was awarded a CBE

CBE

CBE and C.B.E. are abbreviations for "Commander of the Order of the British Empire", a grade in the Order of the British Empire.Other uses include:* Chemical and Biochemical Engineering...

 in 1920. He was born, and died, in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

.

Locomotives

Reid modernised and rebuilt existing engines and introduced superheating

Superheater

A superheater is a device used to convert saturated steam or wet steam into dry steam used for power generation or processes. There are three types of superheaters namely: radiant, convection, and separately fired...

 to the North British Railway. New locomotives designed by him include:

• NBR Class B, later LNER Class J35, 0-6-0
  0-6-0
  Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-6-0 represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and no trailing wheels...
  
  
• NBR Class B, later LNER Class J37, 0-6-0
• NBR Class J, later LNER Class D29, 6' 6" 4-4-0
  4-4-0
  Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-4-0 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles , four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles, and no trailing wheels...
  
  
• NBR Class J, later LNER Class D30, 6' 6" 4-4-0
• NBR Class K, later LNER Class D32, 6' 0" 4-4-0
• NBR Class K, later LNER Class D33, 6' 0" 4-4-0
• NBR Class K, later LNER Class D34, 6' 0" 4-4-0
• NBR Class L, later LNER Class C16, 4-4-2T
• NBR Class M, later LNER Class C15, 4-4-2T

Some of the NBR classes had several variants. The NBR did not distinguish between the variants but the LNER did. The figures 6' 6" or 6' 0" indicate the driving wheel diameter.