A Robin Brass Studio book
Home / Book List / Information on Ordering
Iron & Steam:
A History of the Locomotive and Railway
Car Builders of Toronto
by Dana William Ashdown
Nearly 150 years ago James Good transformed his burgeoning Toronto iron foundry at the corner of Yonge and Queen streets into the Toronto Locomotive Works. Within months the first railway engine built in British North America, the Toronto, was born, and over the next seven decades Toronto's factories rolled out more than 220 steam and electric locomotives and hundreds of cars for Canada's railways, not to mention giant Bucyrus steam shovels, turntables, bridges and streetcar trucks.
The names of the customers who bought this equipment are now legendary: the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Union; the Northern; the Buffalo, Brantford & Goderich; the Buffalo & Lake Huron; the Cobourg & Peterborough; the Grand Trunk; the Great Western; the Toronto, Grey & Bruce; the Toronto & Nipissing; the Canada Southern; the Canadian Pacific; the Canadian Northern; and others.
Yet the six concerns responsible for this prodigious output are largely forgotten. Most were general iron founders like James Good's Toronto Locomotive Works; Dickey, Neill & Company's Soho Foundry; William Hamilton & Son's St. Lawrence Foundry; and Canadian General Electric's Canada Foundry Company, later known as Canadian Allis-Chalmers. McLean & Company's Toronto Car Factory specialized in railway cars, as did the Canada Car & Manufacturing Company. The latter was a unique social and economic experiment that relied on convict labour from the Central Prison, an industrial reformatory opened in 1874. It was believed that learning a useful trade would enable criminals to earn a living in the community and make them less likely to return to crime. The story of this fascinating confluence of commerce, prison reform and politics is told in detail.
The successes and failures of these enterprises were inextricably linked to the tidal forces of the economy, not to mention their own business acumen and will. Now, for the first time, Iron & Steam reveals their full story, from humble beginnings to triumphs and downfalls, through text and pictures. Railway buffs will delight in the descriptions of equipment, including coverage of every known locomotive built. Industrial archaeologists can tour the works. And history readers in general will discover new insights into Canada's past.
The Author
Dana William Ashdown is a Toronto-based researcher with a special
interest in transportation and military history, and the author
of Railway Steamships of Ontario (Boston Mills Press, 1988),
described by Canadian Geographic as "a valuable source for
probing Ontario's shipping past," and by the Toronto Sun's
Mike Filey as "wonderful reading." In addition, he was
a contributor to the book Researching Yonge Street, edited
by Sheila Brown (Ontario Genealogical Society, Toronto Branch,
1996), and he has written a number of articles published in Canada
and the United States.
Home / Book List / Information on Ordering