![]() Today no-one is alive to recall the days when steam engines trundled through the streets of Airdrie. You can see photographs of the foundry on Historic Environment Scotland’s Canmore website.īy the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 this remarkable local industry had all but ended. This engineering firm built only a handful of colliery tank locomotives after acquiring Dick & Stevenson’s engine patents in 1890. The company was still trading in 1922 but presumably went out of business soon afterwards, perhaps with the death of Mr Inglis. In the early 1900s Mr Inglis patented a type of marine boiler. The firm traded from its Albert Engineering & Boiler Works to the south of the town. Gardner Inglis (1856-1924) from Cambusnethan started out as a pattern maker and engine fitter before founding his Airdrie engineering and boiler-making business in 1885. Gibb and Hogg went out of business in 1911. As a result, Gibb & Hogg’s locos bore a strong resemblance to those from the Kilmarnock firm. They also made small industrial locomotives, possibly prompted by the company buying the patterns and drawings of the Kilmarnock locomotive builder McCulloch, Sons & Kennedy when it closed down in 1890. ![]() Here Gibb & Hogg built machine tools such as steam hammers and steam boilers for land and marine use. The location of the works is now the Airdrie Retail Park cark park. After only three years they built a new factory, the Victoria Works at Gartlea on a site close to the North British Railway. These engineers were established in 1866, initially on Wellwynd right in the middle of town. Only one Airdrie-built locomotive survives today, a colliery pug built by the firm of Gibb & Hogg in 1898. The company went out of business around 1913 and the works was turned into a municipal depot. They are on dislay at Summerlee Museum, on loan from Glasgow Museums. These shears were used for cutting-up scrap in a steelworks. Airdrie Iron CompanyĪn example of the kind of machine tools the Airdrie Iron Co. ![]() Dick & Stevenson’s locomotive patents were then acquired by another Airdrie firm, Martyn Brothers (see below). It was one of the largest if not the largest employers in the region. By 1890 the firm had built at least fifty locomotives – in fact one source claimed that in that year their one hundredth loco was under construction (‘New Monkland Parish: Its History, Industries, and People’ by John MacArthur, p.343) – but the works closed that same year. The locomotive factory at Datong, which covered an area of 10,000 square meters, quickly brought production online, and at its peak, the factory employed more than 2000 workers. Newly-built locomotives had to be transported by road (sometimes literally under their own steam!) down Bell Street and along Stirling Street to be put on the tracks at Hallcraig.ĭick & Stevenson produced the very first Airdrie-built locomotive in 1864. The location had a downside in that the factory was on a hill, some distance from the nearest railway line. This firm had a long history, starting as a foundry in 1790 and expanding on the same site on Wellwynd to become the Airdrie Engine Works. The locations of Airdrie’s locomotive builders in the 1890s The underlying map is courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. ![]()
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