The black locomotive was a big, iron beauty. Constructed in 1853 to be rugged and sturdy, the Toronto Number 2 Locomotive was the first railroad engine built in Canada. The Toronto was not the first steam locomotive in Canada – that honour went to the Dorchester. The smaller, lighter steam engine was imported from England but was not quite up to the difficult northern conditions. Built by Robert Stephenson and Company of Newcastle upon Tyne, the Dorchester arrived by ship in 1836. It operated on the first Canadian rail line owned by the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad Company, hauling two passenger coaches from Laprairie to Dorchester in Quebec, according to Collections Canada.
The first Toronto No. 2 engine emerged from James Good’s Foundry in the spring of 1853. James Good emigrated from Ireland to Upper Canada in 1832 at about age 16. He became an ironworker, working his way up to factory owner. With the financial help of his father-in-law, Bartley Bull, in 1840, Good purchased the Union Furnace Company of Toronto, a functioning foundry. After a devastating fire, the factory was rebuilt in 1841 and the business grew. (It was re-named several times: Toronto Locomotive Works, Toronto Engine Works and later Toronto Stove Works.) James Good bid on and won the contracts to build steam engines for the new rail lines being constructed across the countryside that was to be confederated as Canada.
The Toronto Was a Large, Heavy Locomotive
The locomotive was heavy, weighing in at a hefty 25 tons. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the engine was a 4-4-0, meaning it had four driving wheels and four smaller front wheels, and no rear truck. The wheel placement gradually became known as the predominant American standard. The engineer’s cabin had several large windows and a front-row view of the huge funnel-shaped stack billowing gray smoke. Behind the cabin, a tender stored the fuel and water to feed fire box and heat the boiler.
Fresh out of the foundry on April 16th, the Toronto No. 2 “was rolled on temporary wood rails along Queen and York Streets to the permanent track at Front Street,” stated the North American Railway Hall of Fame. A month later, the locomotive was pulling its first four passenger coaches for the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railroad. A short rail line, the train’s initial run was from Toronto to Machell’s Corners (now Aurora). The route eventually lengthened to 94 miles one way, saving riders from a three-week ship voyage through the lakes.
The Foundry Built Many Locomotives
Over the three years to 1856, James Good’s Foundry produced 21 locomotive engines, nine of them for the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railroad at a cost of approximately $5,000 each, wrote George Graham Maines in A Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Other foundries started to produce similar sturdy engines; the Canadian Pacific Railway had a fleet of almost 400 Toronto-style locomotives by 1887. Good was not only a successful foundry-man, though. In elections, he won a seat as Councilman for the St. James Ward in 1854 and won again the next year.
The Canadian-made Toronto No. 2 engine was capable of hauling heavier loads than the lighter British-built Dorchester locomotive that weighed in at just over 5 ½ tons, and was much better equipped to withstand the drastic climate changes. As locomotive designs progressed to larger machines powered by electricity and diesel, the Toronto No. 2 and its equals gradually disappeared from the rails.
Source:
A Dictionary of Canadian Biography, George W. Brown et al, published in 1966 by University of Toronto Press, pp 357-358.
Susanna McLeod - Intriguing Canadians, the art of cartoonists, and fascinating moments in Canada's history have kept Susanna McLeod writing for 16 years.
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