Norris Locomotive Works

The Norris Locomotive Works was a steam locomotive manufacturing company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that produced nearly one thousand railroad engines between 1832 and 1866. It was the dominant American locomotive producer during most of that period, as well as the first major exporter of American locomotives, selling its popular 4-2-0 engines to railways in Europe and building the first locomotive used in South America.

The company was started in 1832 as the American Steam Carriage Company by William Norris (1802-1867) and Major Stephen H. Long (1784-1864), a military topographical engineer and explorer. The two men had experimented with steam engine building for years and, as early as 1829, designed a locomotive to burn anthracite coal. Norris and Long also built an engine called the Black Hawk, which performed with partial success on the Boston and Providence Railroad and the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad in the early 1830s. Major Long later left the firm and William Norris was joined by his brother Septimus, who patented several locomotive-related inventions. The two brothers reformed the enterprise into the Norris Locomotive Works.

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 4-2-0s were exported to England for the Lickey Incline about 1842, English manufacturers having declined to supply.

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