The business started in Glasgow, Scotland, but during this time they were only acting as agents ordering locomotives from established manufacturers, among them Falcon, John Fowler & Co. and Hartley, Arnoux and Fanning.

Kerr, Stuart were known for producing a number of standard designs with many engines being built for stock and sold 'off the shelf' to customers.

The Kerr, Stuart designs are typified by having a single trailing truck (allowing a large firebox to be placed behind the driving wheels) and/or having a saddle tank.

It was purchased in 1972 by Graham Hall who found the locomotive in a back garden in Bromsgrove and sometimes operates at the Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway.

In 2010, the Hunslet Engine Company completed the last Wren "Thomas Wicksteed" for the Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London.

Two worked on the Camber Railway in the Falkland Islands Kerr, Stuart had a large joiners shop and a significant passenger coach construction business.

Five American style bar-framed 2-8-0 tender locomotives were built for the 3 ft (914 mm) gauge Interocianic and Mexican Eastern Railways.

[citation needed] In 1910 a class of four 4-2-2 express passenger locomotives designed by E. J. Dunstan were produced for the Shanghai Nanking Railway.

[citation needed] After the First World War, Kerr, Stuart received a number of large orders from the British mainline railway companies who were seeking to replace obsolete equipment with their own standard designs.

On 17 April 1930 a petition calling for the company to be wound up compulsorily was presented in the High Court (Chancery Division) by the Midland Bank.

[13] However, the sale of the works to George Cohen, Sons & Co Ltd was announced in August 1930; a skeleton staff was employed to complete contracts in progress.

[18] In LTC Rolt's autobiography "The Landscape Trilogy" it is also alleged that the company secretary was discovered to have committed suicide in Kerr, Stuart's London offices, and a large quantity of papers was found to have been burnt in the fireplace.

The Corris Railway commissioned a new locomotive based on the "Tattoo" design of its original No.4 (KS 4047 of 1921) and this was privately built over a ten-year period and went into service in 2005 as No.7.