When steam railcars appeared in Great Britain in large numbers at the beginning of the century, James Manson of the G&SWR also followed the trend and had one steam railcar built in 1904. The vehicle consisted of a small, four-coupled tank locomotive and a conventional passenger carriage, which had only one bogie at the rear end. In theory the locomotive could have been detached from the carriage and used independently, however its water supplies were carried under the floor of the carriage.

The railcar was built in G&SWR's own workshops in Kilmarnock and was used on the nearby line between Mauchline and Catrine, which was only about three miles long. Two identical vehicles were ordered the following year. The use of the railcars ended in 1916 and in 1922 they were sold to the scrap dealer.

The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway operated a total of 20 steam railmotors which were of two different types. The first two vehicles were of a design that had been built by Kerr, Stuart & Co. for the Taff Vale Railway and was also ordered for the L&YR by George Hughes in 1904. They consisted of a small 0-2-2 locomotive and a passenger car that was designed like a semi-trailer. The locomotives had a small transversely mounted boiler with a central firebox and one smokebox at each end. At the rear end, the trailers had an auxiliary cab and a luggage compartment. They only remained in service until 1909.

Kerr, Stuart type

Locomotive Magezine, August 1905

In 1906, Hughes introduced a more conventional type that was built a total of 18 times by 1911 in their own shops. The general layout was the same, but the locomotive part was more similar to a conventional tank locomotive. So they had a longitudinally mounted boiler and had both axles driven. All 18 came to the LMS in 1923 and the first ones were only withdrawn in 1927. The last one even formally passed to British Railways in 1948, but was only assigned its new number on paper and withdrawn in March.