Haigh Foundry - Locomotives and Other Products

Locomotives and Other Products

Lancashire's first three steam locomotives were built here in 1812, 1815 and 1816 for John Clarke's Winstanley Colliery Railway at Orrell. In 1819, the firm built an 84" cylinder Cornish beam engine and beam engines were also exported to the colonies before 1820. After 1835 the foundry produced 0-4-0 and 2-2-0 type locomotives, many subcontracted from Edward Bury and Company. In 1837 Ajax was supplied to the Leicester and Swannington Railway, followed by Hector, an 0-6-0, a design so powerful that orders were received from a number of other railways.

The company built two broad gauge locomotives for the Great Western Railway with upward gearing in 1838 but these were not successful and the gearing was removed around 1840. Four more 4-4-0 saddle tanks for the South Devon Railway were built to a design by Daniel Gooch in the 1850s (Damon, Falcon, Orion and Priam). The works continued to build locomotives on their own account, and under sub-contract. Among these were long boiler types for Jones and Potts and three for T.R.Crampton.

In 1855 two 0-8-0 locomotives for use in the Crimean War, capable of hauling guns up inclines as steep as 1 in 10, were reputed to have been built with horizontal cylindrical furnaces, rather than rectangular fireboxes, and boilers fed by force pumps. They were described as having outside cylinders driving the third set of wheels, while two pairs of wheels were flangeless. The description given here is from the only reference to them from an unreliable list produced in the 1890s. No such engines were recorded in the Crimea, and it is probable they were never built.

When the lease expired in 1856, Haigh Foundry had built over 100 locomotives, produced swing bridges for Hull Docks, ironwork for the Albert Dock in Liverpool and some massive pumping engines - the one at Mostyn Colliery, Flintshire had a 100" bore cylinder and it is believed that when built in 1848, it was the largest cylinder in the world.