Sharp, Stewart and Company
Sharp, Roberts and Company was a locomotive manufacturer in Manchester, England. The founders of the company are the entrepreneur Thomas Sharp and Richard Roberts, who started her company with the name Atlas Works in 1828 to produce textile machinery and machine tools.
The first locomotives
The company had already built some stationary machines, as they for the first time in 1833 built a locomotive for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. This first locomotive was named aptly "experiment" and was a four-wheeled locomotive with the type name Planet, with vertical cylinders over the guide wheels. After the Whyte notation, the model was a 2-2-0. After a few adjustments three other locomotives of this type for the Dublin and Kingstown Railway were still made. Although they reached relatively high speeds, they were too heavy on the rails. So finally, a new model was designed and produced. The 2-2- 2 model got inside horizontal cylinders under the smokebox and additional bearings to support the crankshaft. Approximately 600 of these machines were eventually built 1837-1857. It was the first major series of locomotives, which was developed and built by the company. The first ten of the series were sold to the Grand Junction Railway. Sharpies were the so-called a standard similar 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 appeared under the name Sharp Bros.. During the years 1851 and 1852 were built for the London and North Western Railway twenty locomotives designed by Edward McConnell, the so-called bloomers. Supplier was the company Wolverton railway works.
Sharp Stewart and Company
The year 1852 brought about a similar change of shareholders, the senior partner John Sharp retired and Charles Patrick Stewart took his place as a new partner. As early as 1843, the company also changed the name and changed its name under the name Sharp Stewart and Company. Eight years later, the second senior partner Thomas Sharp withdrew into retirement and Stephen Robinson became his successor. 1860, the company received exclusive rights to Henri Giffards patent for a new steam feed pump. Similar to the German legal form for companies GmbH, introduced in 1864, this company 's limited liability as part of its legal form one.
For the Furness Railway is asked a series of 0-4-0 tank locomotives ago. The number 20 in this series, built in 1863, has been restored to working order offset from the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway in Cumbria. Since 1862 is finally expanded, larger locomotive first some 4-6 -0- saddle tank locomotives, where the tank is located above the boiler, for the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. Five years later they built again for India some 0-8-0 locomotives.
A move of the company was finally 1888 necessary because the different areas of the company needed more space. It still operated a copper and steel trade and still made in machine tools. So you took over the Clyde Locomotive Works in Glasgow and renamed it to Atlas Works.
1889 some composite locomotives for the Argentine Central Railway were built, as well as some 4-4-0 and 2-8-0. An order of seventy-five 4-4-0 and 0-6-0 Midland Railway completed in 1892, the order books.
Among the orders through a series of 0-4-0 from overseas until 1894 joined to a first order from Britain itself, the Jones Goods of the Highland Railway. With the end of the century the company railways supplied around the world with their locomotives.
The emergence of the North British Locomotive Company
1903, after more than 5000 locomotives were built, the company merged with the companies Neilson Reid and Company and Dübs and Company for the North British Locomotive Company.