Locomotives in Lowell

Lowell was a nineteenth-century laboratory for technical innovation in the textile industry, water power, and railroads. As early as 1832, the Locks and Canal machine shop imported a British locomotive from its inventor, Robert Stephenson, in order to develop an American engine. In the late 1830s, Engineer George W. Whistler oversaw construction of the first Lowell-made locomotives copied from the British engine, and by 1845 seventy-five were running on new railroads throughout New England. By the 1860s, Lowell no longer made locomotives. Locomotive No. 410, a steam locomotive built in 1911 by Manchester Locomotive Works, powered trains on the Boston and Maine Railroad after its 1887 merger with the original Boston and Lowell Railroad created a regional rail network.

Lowell, Massachusetts · United States