• Manufacturer:   Manchester Locomotive Works, Manchester, New Hampshire

 

Opened in 1810, the Amoskeag Mills in Manchester, New Hampshire, became the largest cotton mills in the world. In order to get the vast quantities of cotton to the mills and ship out the cloth it produced, Amoskeag built its own railroad equipment and eventually acquired control of the Boston & Maine Railroad. The Amoskeag began building steam locomotives to meet its own needs in 1849. They were sufficiently successful that, ten years later, the locomotive business spun off into the Manchester Locomotive Works.
Amoskeag employed the experience it had developed building locomotives and its own production machinery to begin building steam-powered horse-drawn pumping fire engines in 1859. Steam-powered pumpers brought power and flexibility to fire fighting that paralleled the expansion of dense urban development and large manufacturing complexes in America.They contributed a very important element of safety to America’s growth in the 19th century.