Norris Locomotive Works - Growth and Success

Growth and Success

One of the most historic events in railroading history occurred on July 10, 1836, when the Norris Brothers ran a test of a 4-2-0 locomotive on the Belmont Inclined Plane of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad. (The two-track incline ran from the Schuylkill River for 2,805 feet towards present-day Belmont Avenue, rising one foot in 15 for a total of 187 feet.) Named George Washington, the 14,400 pound engine hauled a load of 19,200 pounds (including 24 people riding on the tender and a freight car) up the grade at 15 miles per hour. This engine, the first in the world to ascend a hill by its own power, proved that a steam locomotive could climb a grade while pulling a load. So remarkable was this accomplishment that reports published in engineering journals emphatically doubted its occurrence. A second, more formal trial with an even greater load proved the engine's capabilities on July 19, 1836.

Norris built the Lafayette for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad the following year. Named after the Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette, this 4-2-0 engine was the world's first locomotive to feature a leading truck and may have been the first standardized production model locomotive. Innovations included the positioning of cylinders ahead of the smokebox and the four-wheel swiveling pilot truck. The Lafayette established the configuration that steam locomotives would follow until the end of the steam era.

In 1847, the Norris Works built the first ten-wheel locomotive in America: the Chesapeake. Operated by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, this was also the world's first 4-6-0 locomotive. It weighed 22 tons and had 14½ by 22 inch cylinders and driving wheels 46 inches in diameter. Initially a wood-burning locomotive, the Chesapeake was converted to burn anthracite coal in 1862, and ran for about another fifteen years. Some authorities claim that Septimus Norris came up with the design, but other sources attribute it to master builder John Brandt of the Erie Railway.

There were nine Norris brothers altogether, with six of them having been involved in locomotive building at some point. William Norris' enterprise was renamed Norris Brothers when brothers Richard and Octavius joined it in 1844 during a period of financial distress and reorganization that included William's gradual departure from the business. The firm later became Richard Norris and Son. Other locomotive factories, operated independently (and unsuccessfully) by various Norris brothers later opened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Schenectady, New York.

The Norris Locomotive Works sold many locomotives overseas, as noted above. This company was the first American exporter of locomotives—and perhaps of large mechanical devices generally. As early as 1840, thirty percent of the firm's production until then had been for foreign markets. Norris machines operated in England, France, the states of the German Confederation (including Prussia, Austria and Saxony), Belgium, Italy, Canada, Cuba and South America. (The Copiapó, built in 1850 for Chilean Railroad, was the first locomotive in all of South America.) These engines influenced contemporary and subsequent locomotive design in many of these countries.

William Norris had several large-scale operating models constructed as presentation pieces to rulers of several nations. Such sovereigns included Tsar Nicholas of Russia and King Louis-Philippe of France, who was so pleased with his model that he gave Norris a gold medal and a handsome gold box. A quarter-sized 4-4-0 locomotive and tender were built for Commodore Matthew C. Perry to deliver as a gift on his second expedition to Japan in 1854. A small circular railway—which also included a miniature passenger car made by another manufacturer and a mile of track—was set up near Yokohama. The Japanese soon could take the first train ride available in the Far East.