Avonside Engine Company

The Avonside Engine Company was a locomotive manufacturer in Avon Street, St Philip's, Bristol, England between 1864 and 1934.

The company was given an order for two broad gauge (7 ft (2,134 mm)) 2-2-2 Firefly class express passenger engines Arrow and Dart, with 7 ft (2.1 m) driving wheels, delivered for the opening of the Great Western Railway (GWR) from Bristol to Bath on 31 August 1840.

[2] Another large order came for ten broad gauge passenger 4-2-2s with 7 ft 6 in drivers and eight goods engines from the Bristol and Exeter Railway for the independent operation of that line from 1 May 1849.

They made a positive decision to concentrate on the smaller industrial railway locomotive types for within the capacity of the existing plant.

[3] In 1905 the Avonside firm left its historic home at St. Philips for a new plant at Fishponds but still with a small engine policy.

This lack of records is particularly unfortunate in that the company was the largest British builder of the Fairlie articulated locomotive.

Alfred Sacré trained under Archibald Sturrock at the Doncaster Plant of the Great Northern Railway and in 1872 moved from Avonside to the Yorkshire Engine Company, Sheffield where he built more Fairlie types.

In 1878–1879 on the recommendation of Robert Francis Fairlie Avonside built the R class of 18 0-6-4T single Fairlies for the New Zealand Government Railways.

Widmark to operate on the Fell mountain railway system on the Rimutaka Incline in the North Island of New Zealand.

These and two later engines of very similar design built by Neilson and Company handled the entire traffic for eighty years until the opening of the five mile long base tunnel in 1955.

Widmark was an inventive engineer and patented a design of steam operated cylinder cocks which were of great use to Avonside on articulated locomotives since they dispensed with mechanical linkages.

These very successful and reliable wood-burning locomotives pre-dated the first significant British domestic railway 4-6-0, the 'Jones Goods', by over 20 years.