Locomotive Software was the "mind" behind Amstrad's hardware. Founded by Richard Clayton and Chris Hall in 1983, the company became Alan Sugar's strategic partner, providing the soul for the CPC range and, most notably, the PCW series.

Their first major assignment was developing a BASIC clone for Acorn, but their efficiency caught Amstrad's attention. For the launch of the Amstrad PCW in 1985, Locomotive not only adapted the CP/M Plus operating system (originally by Digital Research) but created from scratch the software that would justify the purchase of millions of machines: LocoScript.

Unlike other developers of the era, Locomotive focused on professional usability. LocoScript allowed typists and administrative staff to transition to the digital world without needing to learn complex console commands. This symbiosis between Amstrad's affordable hardware and Locomotive's robust software allowed the PCW to dominate the European word processing market for nearly a decade.

During the 90s, the company attempted to leap into Windows and the emerging Internet market with the Turnpike software. Although it was an award-winning product highly valued by Demon Internet users, the transition to the new software paradigm dominated by giants like Microsoft made its survival as an independent entity difficult.

Mallard BASIC was the professional development tool for the PCW. Its technical core, the JetSAM system, implemented a B*-Tree data structure that enabled indexed file management. This allowed accounting applications to search records by name or code instantaneously, a feature rarely found in home-oriented BASIC versions.

In 1997, Locomotive Software sold its connectivity and Internet division (including the award-winning Turnpike suite) to Demon Internet. Following the sale of its primary assets, the company drastically reduced its operational activity until its formal dissolution on October 9, 2010.

Its founders went on to follow distinguished paths: Richard Clayton later became a renowned expert in cybersecurity and cybercrime at the University of Cambridge. Locomotive's technical legacy remains today as the absolute standard for programming efficiency on the Z80 processor, having demonstrated that well-designed software could overcome the physical limitations of hardware.