Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works was a 19th-century manufacturer of

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s based in Paterson, in

Passaic County Passaic County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of New Jersey that is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the population of Passaic County was enumerated at 524,118, an increase of 22,892 (4.6%) from t ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, in the United States. It built more than six thousand steam locomotives for railroads around the world. Most 19th-century U.S. railroads owned at least one Rogers-built locomotive. The company's most famous product was a locomotive named '' The General'', built in December 1855, which was one of the principals of the

Great Locomotive Chase The Great Locomotive Chase (also known as Andrews' Raid or the Mitchel Raid) was a military raid that occurred April 12, 1862, in northern Georgia during the American Civil War. Volunteers from the Union Army, led by civilian scout James J. And ...

of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. The company was founded by Thomas Rogers in an 1832 partnership with

Morris Ketchum Morris Ketchum (February 5, 1796 – January 1, 1880) was a prominent American banker and financier of the 19th century. Early life Ketchum was born on February 5, 1796 at Waterford in Saratoga County, New York. He was the fourth child of Amos ...

and Jasper Grosvenor as Rogers, Ketchum and Grosvenor. Rogers remained president until his death in 1856. His son, Jacob S. Rogers, reorganized the company as Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works and led the company until he retired in 1893. Robert S. Hughes then became president and reorganized the company as Rogers Locomotive Company, which he led until his death in 1900. Rogers avoided the 1901

American Locomotive Company The American Locomotive Company (often shortened to ALCO, ALCo or Alco) was an American manufacturer of locomotives, diesel generators, steel, and tanks that operated from 1901 to 1969. The company was formed by the merger of seven smaller locomo ...

(ALCO) merger by closing and reopening as Rogers Locomotive Works, but the company's independence lasted only until 1905, when ALCO purchased it. ALCO continued building new steam locomotives at the Rogers plant until 1913 and used the Rogers facilities through the 1920s as a parts storage facility and warehouse. Eventually, ALCO sold the property to private investors. Today, several Rogers-built locomotives exist in railroad museums around the world, and the plant's erecting shop is preserved as the Thomas Rogers Building; it is the current location of the

Paterson Museum Paterson Museum is a museum in Paterson, in Passaic County, New Jersey, in the United States. Founded in 1925, it is owned and run by the city of Paterson and its mission is to preserve and display the industrial history of Paterson. It is loc ...

, whose mission is to preserve and display Paterson's industrial history.

1831 to 1856: Thomas Rogers era

The firm that was to become Rogers Locomotive Works began in 1831. Thomas Rogers had been designing and building machinery for

textile Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

manufacturing for nearly 20 years when he sold his interest in Godwin, Rogers & Company (of which he was the Rogers part of the name) in June of that year. Rogers set out on his own with a new company called Jefferson Works in

Paterson, New Jersey Paterson ( ) is the largest City (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Morris Ketchum Morris Ketchum (February 5, 1796 – January 1, 1880) was a prominent American banker and financier of the 19th century. Early life Ketchum was born on February 5, 1796 at Waterford in Saratoga County, New York. He was the fourth child of Amos ...

and Jasper Grosvenor. Jefferson Works was renamed Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor, and the company began to diversify into the railroad industry. The company soon manufactured springs, axles and other small parts for railroad use. The first locomotive that Rogers' company assembled was actually built by

Robert Stephenson and Company Robert Stephenson and Company was a locomotive manufacturing company founded in 1823 in Forth Street, Newcastle upon Tyne in England. It was the first company in the world created specifically to build railway engines. Famous early locomotiv ...

of England in 1835. This locomotive was the ''McNeil'' for the

Paterson and Hudson River Railroad The Paterson and Hudson River Railroad was a railroad that operated in New Jersey and connected the cities of Jersey City and southeast Paterson. The railroad was started in 1833. The company was the first in the United States to build moveable ...

. It took another two years before Rogers received its first order for a complete locomotive. In 1837, the

Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad The Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad was the second railroad to be built and operated in the U.S. state of Ohio (the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad was first, beginning operations in Toledo during the Toledo War in 1836). It was also the first railro ...

ordered two locomotives from Rogers to form the beginning of the railroad's roster. The first of these two locomotives was the '' Sandusky'', which became the first locomotive to cross the

Allegheny Mountains The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less devel ...

(albeit by canal boat and not by rail), and the first locomotive to operate in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. ''Sandusky'' included features designed by Thomas Rogers that had not been seen in locomotive construction to date. It was also the first locomotive to use

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuriti ...

driving wheel On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotive's pistons (or turbine, in the case of a steam turbine locomotive). On a conventional, non-articulated locomotive, the driving wheels are all coupled ...

s, and the wheels included built-in counterweights to reduce the amount of wear on the

track Track or Tracks may refer to: Routes or imprints * Ancient trackway, any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity * Animal track, imprints left on surfaces that an animal walks across * Desire path, a line worn by people taking the shorte ...

caused by the weight of the driving rod and wheel all coming down at once during the wheels' rotations. Before ''Sanduskys construction, driving wheels were typically built with

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

en spokes, much like

wagon A wagon or waggon is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draught animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people. Wagons are immediately distinguished from ...

wheels. Some accounts also state that ''Sandusky'' was the first locomotive to feature a

whistle A whistle is an instrument which produces sound from a stream of gas, most commonly air. It may be mouth-operated, or powered by air pressure, steam, or other means. Whistles vary in size from a small slide whistle or nose flute type to a larg ...

, but this has since been proven false. Rogers was not working completely alone in American locomotive manufacturing. In 1837, in addition to building the company's first locomotive, Rogers also filled orders from fellow locomotive builders

Matthias W. Baldwin Matthias William Baldwin (December 10, 1795 – September 7, 1866) was an American inventor and machinery manufacturer, specializing in the production of steam locomotives. Baldwin's small machine shop, established in 1825, grew to become ...

(founder of

Baldwin Locomotive Works The Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1951. Originally located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century. The company was for decades t ...

) and William Norris (founder of

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 ...

) for locomotive tires of various sizes. Once Rogers started working on his own locomotives, however, no further orders from either Baldwin or Norris were forthcoming. Within Rogers' own shop, William Swinburne worked as the shop foreman until he moved on to form his own locomotive manufacturing company,

Swinburne, Smith and Company Swinburne, Smith and Company was a railroad locomotive manufacturing company of the mid-19th century. The company was founded in 1845, in Paterson, New Jersey, by a partnership between William Swinburne (locomotive builder), William Swinburne and S ...

in 1845. After Swinburne left Rogers, John Cooke also worked at the Rogers plant. Like Swinburne, Cooke later went on to form his own locomotive manufacturing firm, Danforth, Cooke & Company. Another engineer who worked at Rogers was Zerah Colburn, the well known locomotive engineer and, later editor and publisher. Colburn was, around 1854, "superintendent and/or consultant" at the works where he introduced a number of improvements in locomotive design. His assistant was William S. Hudson who succeeded Rogers after he died in 1856, and was responsible for further engineering enhancement. Hudson would remain with Rogers until his own death in 1881. General locomotive c 1907

Rogers locomotives were, from very early in the company's history, seen as powerful, capable engines on American railroads. The ''Uncle Sam'', serial number 11, a 4-2-0 (a locomotive with two unpowered axles in front, followed by one powered axle) built in 1839 for the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, was noted by ''American Railroad Journal'' for hauling a 24-car train up a grade of or 0.49% at . In 1846, Rogers built what is referred to as the largest 6-wheel truck engine (

4-2-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, two powered driving wheels on one axle and no trailing wheels. This type of locomotive is often called a ...

) in the United States; the ''

Licking Licking is the action of passing the tongue over a surface, typically either to deposit saliva onto the surface, or to collect liquid, food or minerals onto the tongue for ingestion, or to communicate with other animals. Many animals both gro ...

'', serial number 92, built for the Mansfield and Sandusky Railroad, generated of steam pressure and could pull a train up a grade of or 0.3%. Arguably, the most famous locomotive to come out of the Rogers shops was built in 1855. Rogers built a 4-4-0, serial number 631, in December of that year for the

Western and Atlantic Railroad The Western & Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia (W&A) is a railroad owned by the State of Georgia and currently leased by CSX, which CSX operates in the Southeastern United States from Atlanta, Georgia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was fo ...

. The railroad named the locomotive '' The General''. This locomotive, best known for being at the heart of an

incident Incident may refer to: * A property of a graph in graph theory * ''Incident'' (film), a 1948 film noir * Incident (festival), a cultural festival of The National Institute of Technology in Surathkal, Karnataka, India * Incident (Scientology), a ...

, is now on display at the

Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History The Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History is a museum in Kennesaw, Georgia, that contains a collection of artifacts and relics from the American Civil War, as well as from railroads of the state of Georgia and surrounding regions. Th ...

(the Big Shanty Museum) in

Kennesaw Kennesaw is a suburban city northwest of Atlanta in Cobb County, Georgia, United States, located within the greater Atlanta metropolitan area. Known from its original settlement in the 1830s until 1887 as Big Shanty, it became Kennesaw under its ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. Not only were Rogers locomotives known in the industry for their power, but they were also known for their endurance. It is estimated that one locomotive,

Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also co ...

4-4-0 number 23, serial number 449, built in December 1853, operated over one million miles () in its thirty-year career on the Illinois Central.

1856 to 1905: Reorganization and decline

When Thomas Rogers died in 1856, his son Jacob S. Rogers reorganized RK&G, with Ketchum and Grosvenor remaining as investors, as the Rogers Locomotive & Machine Works. Rogers built their first

2-6-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, usually in a leading truck, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing wheels. ...

, which is sometimes referred to as the first 2-6-0 built in the United States, in 1863 for the

New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company The United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (UNJ&CC) was a railroad company which began as the important Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A), whose 1830 lineage began as one of the eight or ten earliest permanent North AmericanList of Earliest Am ...

. The company continued manufacturing both locomotives and textile machinery for nearly another 20 years. In November 1868 Rogers delivered five identical coal-burning

4-4-0 4-4-0 is a locomotive type with a classification that uses the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement and represents the arrangement: four leading wheels on two axles (usually in a leading bogie), four po ...

steam locomotives (assigned Nos. 116–120) to the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

, which were subsequently placed into freight service in western Wyoming and Utah. Union Pacific No. 119 would gain fame on May 10, 1869, when it took part in the "

Golden Spike The golden spike (also known as The Last Spike) is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad ...

" ceremony at

Promontory A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the so ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, to celebrate the completion of the

First transcontinental railroad North America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the " Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail netwo ...

. The unit was rebuilt in the early 1880s, and redesignated as road No. 343 in 1885. No. 119 was retired and sent to the scrapyard after nearly 35 years of service in April 1903. A full-scale, operating replica was completed in 1979, and now is part of an operational display at the Golden Spike National Historic Site. In 1870, Rogers was involved in a suit against

Jay Gould Jason Gould (; May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who is generally identified as one of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made hi ...

, James Fisk Jr., William H. Rasson and C. V. Nason alleging that Rogers was charged unreasonable freight rates when delivering their products; the court decided in favor of Rogers, delivering indictments against the four men. In the mid-1870s, Rogers ended production of textile machinery and began concentrating solely on locomotive manufacturing. Rogers customers of the mid-19th century continued purchasing their locomotives. The

Louisville and Nashville Railroad The Louisville and Nashville Railroad , commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States. Chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1850, the road grew into one of the ...

(L&N) purchased so many locomotives from the company that the railroad was given a free locomotive as a thank-you bonus in 1879.

Reuben Wells ''The Reuben Wells'' is a steam locomotive in the permanent collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Beginning in 1868, it operated for 30 years in Madison, Indiana, pushing train ...

was appointed as shop superintendent in 1887. Jacob Rogers, now in his late 70s, gradually passed more and more responsibility to Wells until Rogers resigned the presidency in 1893. The company was then reorganized as the Rogers Locomotive Company. After just over 60 years, the Rogers company would no longer be run by a member of the Rogers family. The company reorganized under its former treasurer and new president, Robert S. Hughes, as the Rogers Locomotive Company; Jacob Rogers remained the company's principal investor. Hughes led the company until his own death in 1900. A year later, Jacob Rogers closed the Rogers Locomotive Company plant. In 1901, the year that Jacob Rogers died and the same year that the

(ALCO) was formed through the merger of eight other locomotive manufacturers, the company reopened as the Rogers Locomotive Works. Reuben Wells was again the shop superintendent, but the firm was at a competitive disadvantage. Not enough capital investment was made to purchase new equipment or in research and development. ALCO and Baldwin, the largest locomotive manufacturers in North America, held too much of a lead in manufacturing and selling their own locomotives for Rogers to keep up. Compounding Rogers' troubles further, the firm had no nearby rail connection, the closest railroad,

Erie Railroad The Erie Railroad was a railroad that operated in the northeastern United States, originally connecting New York City — more specifically Jersey City, New Jersey, where Erie's Pavonia Terminal, long demolished, used to stand — with Lake Erie ...

, being located approximately to the east, making transporting materials and locomotives time-consuming, increasingly more so as the surrounding city of Patterson was built up and larger engines were ordered.

1905 to present: absorbed into ALCO

Faced with stiff competition and an inability to increase its own capacity, Rogers Locomotive Works was purchased by ALCO in 1905. Rogers' last independently built locomotive was serial number 6271, a

0-6-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles and no trailing wheels. This was the most common wheel arrangemen ...

tank locomotive A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender. Most tank engines also have bunkers (or fuel tanks) to hold fuel; in a tender-tank locom ...

built for W. R. Grace & Company in February 1905. ALCO continued building locomotives at the Rogers plant until 1913 when manufacturing at the plant ceased permanently. Locomotives built at the Rogers plant under ALCO are generally referred to as locomotives built by ALCO-Rogers. ALCO used the Rogers plant buildings as warehouses well into the 1920s, but eventually sold off all of the property. The original Rogers erecting shop was converted into office space and was still in use in that manner as late as 1992. The erecting shop building has since been renamed the "Thomas Rogers Building" and is now the home of the

. The museum preserves and displays artifacts of Paterson's industrial history. A

locomotive that was used in the construction of the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit ...

is on display outside the museum, but it is one that was built by ALCO-Cooke (the former

Cooke Locomotive and Machine Works The Cooke Locomotive and Machine Works, located in Paterson, New Jersey, manufactured steam railroad locomotives from 1852 until it was merged with seven other manufacturers to form American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in 1901. History The firm wa ...

plant, also located in Paterson) and not by Rogers.

Preserved Rogers locomotives

The following locomotives (in serial number order) built by Rogers, before ALCO's acquisition of the company, have been preserved. Where multiple railroads and road numbers are listed, they are given in chronological order for the locomotives; all locations are in the United States unless noted. The following locomotives (in serial number order) built since ALCO's acquisition of the company have been preserved...

References

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External links