THE
ROGERS LOCOMOTIVE COMPANY,
PATERSON, – NEW JERSEY.
ESTABLISHED IN 1831.
NEW YORK;
GEORGE G. PECK, Printer,
117 Chambers Street.
1897.
ROGERS LOCOMOTIVE COMPANY.
The works of this company were established by Thomas Rogers in the year 1831, and from 1832 were carried on under the firm name of Rogers. Ketchum & Grosvenor until the death of Thomas Rogers in the year 1856, when they were reorganized under a charter with the title of The Rogers Locomotive & Machine Works with his son, J S. Rogers, as President, who from that time until 1893 continued in that capacity to manage the business of these works. From February, 1893, they were continued under the name of the Rogers Locomotive Company with Robert S. Hughes as President, and Reuben A Vells as Superintendent. Since Thomas Rogers commenced to build locomotives in Paterson not only has the machine as a whole been going through a process of evolution, but there has also been a development of its various parts to the functions which they have to perform.
The -”Sandusky,” the first locomotive built by Thomas Rogers in 1837, weighed probably less than ten tons. Since then the weights have gradually increased, and it is now no uncommon thing to build locomotives in these works weighing seventy-five tons and over. The working pressure in the boilers has also been increased from about one hundred pounds per square inch in the first Rogers engines built, to one hundred and eighty, and in some cases to two hundred pounds, in engines built during the past few years.
Within the past five years a number of new and improved tools have been added, specially designed for the work to be done, so that the shops are now equipped with the most approved modern tools for doing accurate work, and with a complete system of templates and gauges by the use of which the similar parts of locomotives of the same class are furnished with a degree of precision which insures their being interchangeable, thus making it practicable to supply duplicate parts of locomotives built at these works at the shortest notice. The Company has now every facility which long experience, thorough organization and abundant capital can provide for turning out high class work and for conducting the business of manufacturing locomotives in the most perfect manner possible.