Sharp, Stewart and Company

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An OFWJ steam locomotive nr 8 by Sharp, Stewart & Co, 1876, in the Railway Museum in Grängesberg

Sharp, Roberts and Company was a locomotive manufacturer in Manchester , England . The founders of the company are entrepreneurs Thomas Sharp and Richard Roberts , who started their company called Atlas Works in 1828 to manufacture textile machines and machine tools.

The first locomotives

The company had already built a number of stationary machines when they first built a locomotive for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1833 . This first locomotive was aptly called "Experiment" and was a four-wheeled locomotive with the type name Planet, with vertical cylinders above the guide wheels. According to Whyte notation , the model was a 2-2-0 . After some adjustments, three more locomotives of this type were built for the Dublin and Kingstown Railway . Although they reached relatively high speeds, they were too heavy on the rails. So a new model was finally designed and produced. The 2-2-2 model got horizontal cylinders inside under the smoke chamber and additional bearings to support the crankshaft. Around 600 of these machines were eventually built between 1837 and 1857. It was the first major series of locomotives developed and built by the company. The first ten from the series were sold to the Grand Junction Railway . The so-called Sharpies became a standard, comparable to the Bury machines.

A new name, Sharp Brothers

By 1843 the ownership changed in the company, the partner Roberts left the company, and the company now joined under the name Sharp Bros. on. During the years 1851 and 1852, twenty locomotives were built for the London and North Western Railway based on a design by Edward McConnell, the so-called bloomers . The supplier was Wolverton Railway Works .

Sharp, Stewart and Company

The year 1852 brought another change of shareholders, senior partner John Sharp retired and Charles Patrick Stewart took his place as a new partner. As in 1843, the company also changed its name and now operated under the name Sharp, Stewart and Company . Eight years later, the second senior partner Thomas Sharp also retired and Stephen Robinson succeeded him.

In 1860 the company received the sole rights to Henri Giffard's patent for a new steam jet feed pump . Similar to the German legal form for companies, GmbH , this company also introduced limited liability as part of its legal form in 1864.

A number of 0-4-0 tank locomotives were produced for the Furness Railway . Number 20 of this series, built in 1863, was restored and put into working order by the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway in Cumbria. From 1862 onwards, larger locomotives were also built, the first being a few 4-6-0 semi-tank locomotives with the tank above the boiler for the Great Indian Peninsula Railway . Five years later, some 0-8-0 locomotives were built again for India .

The company finally had to move in 1888 as the various areas of the company needed more space. They still operated a copper and steel trade and still made machine tools. So one took over the Clyde Locomotive Works in Glasgow and renamed it Atlas Works .

In 1889 some compound locomotives were built for the Argentine Central Railway , as well as some 4-4-0 and 2-8-0 . An order for seventy-five 4-4-0 and 0-6-0 from Midland Railway filled the order books in 1892. In addition to the orders for a number of 0-4-0 from overseas, there was a first order from Britain itself, the Jones Goods of the Highland Railway , in 1894 . At the end of the century, the company was supplying railways around the world with its locomotives.

The creation of the North British Locomotive Company

After building more than 5000 locomotives, the company merged in 1903 with the Neilson Reid and Company and Dübs and Company to form the North British Locomotive Company .

literature

  • James W. Lowe: British Steam Locomotive Builders. Guild Publishing, London 1989

Web links

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