James Harris & Co.

Casting of a builder's plate from passenger combine No. 24 built by James Harris & Co. in 1869.

James Harris was a blacksmith and machinist who founded a tool making and foundry business in Saint John, New Brunswick. The firm moved into railway machinery production in the 1850s beginning with casting railway wheels, but moving into railway running gear and then into the production of railway cars in the 1860s. By the 1870s, James Harris was one of the largest heavy manufacturing firms in Canada and an important supplier of rolling stock to the Windsor & Annapolis Railway, the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Harris died in 1888 and the firm was sold. The plant machinery and inventory was bought by Rhodes, Curry & Co. in 1893 and moved from Saint John, NB to Amherst, NS.

References

D. Rik Whittaker, "HARRIS, JAMES STANLEY", Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume XI (1881-1890).

Ronald J. Jack, "The Harris Foundry and Railway Car Works", The Lost Valley - An Internet History of Saint John, N.B., 9 November 2007.

Equipment built by James Harris & Co. in Saint John, New Brunswick