Costruzioni Meccaniche di Saronno was an Italian company producing steam locomotives and cars, active from 1887 to 1918.

Origins

The origins of the engineering company are to be found in a framework of political agreements of the economic-military alliance assumed by the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to an institutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and f ...

, the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 1880s. Favoured by these international cooperation agreements, the German company

Maschinenfabrik Esslingen Maschinenfabrik Esslingen (ME), was a German engineering firm that manufactured locomotives, tramways, railway wagons, roll-blocks, technical equipment for the railways, (turntables and traversers), bridges, steel structures, pumps and boiler ...

founded the Costruzioni Meccaniche di Saronno in the

Varese Varese ( , , or ; lmo, label= Varesino, Varés ; la, Baretium; archaic german: Väris) is a city and ''comune'' in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, north-west of Milan. The population of Varese in 2018 has reached 80,559. It is the c ...

municipality and began to manufacture its renowned steam locomotives in Italy.

Production

Between 1887 and 1913, the company built steam locomotives of various

track gauge In rail transport, track gauge (in American English, alternatively track gage) is the distance between the two rails of a railway track. All vehicles on a rail network must have wheelsets that are compatible with the track gauge. Since many ...

s for a number of railway companies. Beginning in 1894, it began assembling

Peugeot Type 3 Background The earliest Peugeot models from 1889 were steam-powered tricycles, built in collaboration with Léon Serpollet. In 1890, Armand Peugeot met with car technology innovators Gottlieb Daimler and Émile Levassor and became convinced t ...

cars, produced under a Peugeot license and with engines supplied by the French company.

World War I

During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, the company converted to war production. At the end of the conflict the company, until then predominantly backed by German capital, was acquired by the engineer Nicola Romeo with backing from a Swiss bank, but it appears that Romeo closed the plant in 1918 and did not revive it until 1925.

Nicola Romeo

In 1911 Nicola Romeo (later the owner of

Alfa Romeo Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. () is an Italian luxury car manufacturer and a subsidiary of Stellantis. The company was founded on 24 June 1910, in Milan, Italy. "Alfa" is an acronym of its founding name, "Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili." "A ...

) founded the limited partnership ''Ing. Nicola Romeo e Co.'' for the production of mining machinery. The company soon began to specialize in the production of railway

rolling stock The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles can ...

, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the emerging

internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal c ...

technology to license some of the first Italian

railcar A railcar (not to be confused with a railway car) is a self-propelled railway vehicle designed to transport passengers. The term "railcar" is usually used in reference to a train consisting of a single coach (carriage, car), with a dri ...

s. After some years of inactivity, Romeo re-started the Costruzioni Meccaniche plant as CEMSA in 1925.

External Links

Existing Locomotives of Costruzioni Meccaniche di Saronno

References