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US and UK engine build periods – a history lesson

Looking at the English scene from the beginning it would appear that Richard Bach demonstrated a self-moving engine at the Carlisle Show in 1855, Garrett at Chelmsford in 1856 and Burrell in the same year. Thomas Aveling amended a Clayton & Shuttleworth portable to become self-moving in 1858. At the termination of traction engine building in England we have the last unit produced in 1944 (No 14378 sold by Foster in that year).

However, in America traction engine building covered more or less the same period of time as follows: It is on record that a self-moving engine manufactured by the Ames Iron Works of Oswego, New York State was supplied to the order of Baker & Hamilton of Sacramento & San Francisco in 1850. This engine had been designed by Joseph Ames by adapting it from a portable engine in a similar way that Aveling had in 1858. A letter from Joseph McCune of Warrenton, Jeffersdon County, Ohio dated 4 November 1858 described his journey from his home to the Cadiz Fair using a traction engine manufactured by the Newark Machine Works of Newark, Ohio. This engine was designed by Messrs Joseph E Holmes and JW Gray. Also between 1857 and 1858 two pioneers, JT Overton with his ‘steam wagon’ and Warren P Miller of Marysville, California, both demonstrated their self-moving engines at the California State Fair. The latter engine was a crawler and it was described in the Daily Alta Californian and the San Jose Tribune in 1858.

Richard Dudgeon is also credited with the manufacture of his first engine in 1855 (his second engine still exists). The last traction engine built in the US was Works No 246 of 1942 which was built by the Ferdinand Iron Works of Ferdinand, Indiana to the designs of Joseph Kitten – and known as the ‘Kitten Return Flue Traction Engine’.

If 92 years is being compressed into a ‘short period’ then the English time of 89 years is even shorter!

Maurice Kelly
Kingston Buci
West Sussex