Fairbanks-Morse
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Fairbanks-Morse, an historic American (and Canadian) industrial scales manufacturer. It later diversified into pumps, engines and industrial supplies. One arm is now a diesel engine manufacturer located in Beloit, Wisconsin and has specialized in the manufacture of opposed piston diesel engines for United States Naval vessels and railroad locomotives since 1932. F-M is currently owned by EnPro Industries, and now also manufactures a line of natural gas and dual-fuel powered engines and generators. Fairbanks-Morse Pump is a separate company in business in Kansas City, Missouri, while Fairbanks Scale is, now, again a different unit.
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[edit] Founding and early history
Fairbanks, Morse & Company had its beginning in 1823 when inventor Thaddeus Fairbanks began an ironworks in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, to manufacture two of his patented inventions, a cast iron plow and a heating stove. In 1829 he started in a hemp dressing business for which he built the machinery. Though unsuccessful in fabrication for fibre factories, another invention by Thaddeus, the platform scale, formed the basis for the great enterprise. That device was patented in June 1832, and a generation later, the E & T Fairbanks & Company was selling thousands of scales; first in the United States, later in Europe, South America and even Imperial China. Scales were integral to business as marine and railway shippers charged by weight. Fairbanks scales won 63 medals over the years in international competition. In fact. Fairbanks was the leading manufacturer in the US--and the best known the world over--until Henry Ford stole that crown.
In Wisconsin, one L. Wheeler, designed a durable windmill for pumping water, a device called the Eclipse Windmill. Wheeler set up shop in Beloit, just after the US Civil War. Soon the familiar windmills dotted the landscape on farms throughout the West and as far away as Australia. At about the same time, a Fairbanks & Co employee named Charles Hosmer Morse opened an office of Fairbanks & Co in Chicago. Not only did he expand the company's territory of operation, he widened its product line. Included in this, Morse brought Wheeler, and his Eclipse Windmill pumps, into business with the Fairbanks company. As a result, Morse would later become a partner and the firm subsequently was named Fairbanks-Morse & Company by the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Headquarted in Chicago, all Canadian and American cities had branch dealerships of Fairbanks-Morse. Fairbanks first came to Montreal, Canada, in 1876 and later opened a factory there.
[edit] Market expansion into engines
In the late nineteenth century business expanded in the Western United States, as did the company's catalog. It grew to include typewriters, hand trucks, railway velocipedes, pumps, and a variety of warehouse and bulk shipping tools. The company became an industrial supplier distributing complete "turn-key" systems: tools, plumbing, gauges, gaskets, parts, valves and pipe. Its 1910 catalog extended to over 800 pages. The Company began to produce oil and naptha engines in the 1890s (one-cylinder hot-tube engines). The Fairbanks-Morse gas engine was a success with farmers, and irrigation, electricity generation, and oilfield work also benefited from these engines. Small lighting plants built by the company were popular. Fairbanks-Morse powerplants evolved by burning kerosene in 1893, coal gas in 1905, then to semi-diesel engines in 1913 and to full diesel engines in 1924. In 1916 the company began production of the Model Z single cylinder engine in one, three and six horsepower sizes. Over a half million units would be produced in the following 30 years. The model Z found favor with farmers, and the Model N with fishermen as such plants delivered power when needed. The Company also had brief forays into building automobiles, cranes, televisions, radios and refrigerators but output was slight in these fields.
After the expiration of Rudolf Diesel's American licence in 1912, Fairbanks entered the large engine trade. The company's larger Model Y semi-diesel became a standard workhorse across the continent, and sugar, rice, timber, and mine mills used the engine. As the model Y was available in sizes from one through six cylinders, or 25 to 200 horsepower respectively, many orders were placed. The Y-VA engine was the first commercial version of a high-compression, cold start, full diesel developed by Fairbanks-Morse without the acquisition of any foreign patent. This machine was developed in Beloit, Wisconsin, and introduced in 1924. The company expanded its line to the marine CO engine, and the mill model E, which was a modernized Y diesel. From this Fairbanks-Morse became a major engine manufacturer and developed plants for railway and marine applications. The development of the diesel locomotive, tug, and ship in the 1930s fostered the expansion of the company. Large orders for Fairbanks Morse engines were placed in the Second World War by the US Navy.
[edit] Seagoing diesel engines
US Navy submarines in the Second World War used the Fairbanks-Morse Diesel units. Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines are widely used today in United States Naval vessels, such as the LSD-41 Whidbey Island Class and LPD-17 San Antonio Class Amphibious Assault Ships.
[edit] Railroad locomotives
Shortly after it won its first Navy contract, the company produced a 300 hp 5 x 6 engine that saw limited use in railcar applications on the B&O, Milwaukee Road, and a few other lines. Two of the 5 x 6s were placed in an experimental center cab switcher locomotive under development by the Reading Railroad (road #87, built in 1939 by the St. Louis Car Company, or SLCC, and scrapped in 1953). A 5 x 6 powered the plant switcher at F-M's manufacturing facility.
In 1939 the SLCC placed F-M 800 hp 8 x 10 engines in six streamlined railcars, which are known today as the FM OP800. In 1944 F-M began production of its own 1,000 hp yard switcher, the H-10-44. Milwaukee Road #760 (originally delivered as #1802), the first Fairbanks-Morse locomotive constructed in their own plant, is now preserved and on display at the Illinois Railway Museum. F-M, like other locomotive producers, was subject to strict wartime restrictions regarding the number and type of railroad-related products they could manufacture. Following World War II, North American railways began phasing out their aging steam locomotives and sought to replace them with diesel locomotives at an ever-increasing rate. Fairbanks-Morse, and its competitors, sought to capitalize on this new market opportunity. The Virginian Railway was an early advocate of FM power, buying the company's products to the exclusion of other manufacturers such as EMD and Baldwin.
In December 1945 F-M produced its first streamlined cab-equipped dual service diesel locomotive as direct competition to such models as the ALCO PA and EMD E-unit. Assembly of the 2,000 hp unit, which was mounted on a A1A-A1A wheelset, was subcontracted out to General Electric due to lack of space at F-M's Wisconsin plant. GE built the locomotives at its Erie, Pennsylvania facility, thereby giving rise to the name "Erie-built". F-M retained the services of renowned industrial designer Raymond Loewy to create a visually impressive carbody for the Erie-built. The line was only moderately successful. A total of 82 cab and 28 cabless booster units was sold through 1949, when production was ended. The Erie-built's successor was to be manufactured in Beloit and designed from the ground up. The result was the Consolidated line, or "C-liner" (one of the company's best-known products) which debuted in January, 1950.
Orders for the C-liners were initially received from the New York Central, followed by the Long Island Rail Road, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Milwaukee Road and the New Haven. F-M design locomotives were also produced under license in Canada by the Canadian Locomotive Company. Orders to the CLC were also forthcoming in Canada from the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways. Accounts of mechanical unreliability and poor technical support began to emerge. It became apparent that the 2,400 h.p. Westinghouse generators were prone to failure, and the F-M prime movers suffered from poor piston life and proved difficult to maintain. Moreover, railroads were quickly moving away from the cab unit type, and standardizing on road-switcher designs, as offered by the competition in the form of the EMD GP7 or the ALCO RS-3.
By 1952 orders had dried up in the United States, and the production run was only 99 units. The units were more popular in Canada, particularly with the CP, and orders continued there until 1955. Several variants were only produced by the Canadian Locomotive Company, and Canadian roads accepted a total of 66 units. Westinghouse had announced in 1953 that it was leaving the locomotive equipment market, partly due to the generator reliability issues in the F-M units. This development made continuing production of the C-liners impractical without a redesign, and since marketplace acceptance was marginal, the decision was made to end production.
With the Train Master series, F-M continued production of their road-switcher designs, but these also proved unsuccessful in the marketplace. Fairbanks-Morse, perhaps realizing it could not overcome the competitive advantage EMD enjoyed from having been able to manufacture and promote their F units and other road diesels during the War years, elected to depart the locomotive market. F-M sold its last locomotive in the US in 1958, and shipped its final unit to Mexico in 1963. The Canadian Locomotive plant at Kingston was closed after a lengthy labor strike in 1969.
[edit] Postwar Power Products
Fairbanks-Morse continued to build diesel and gas engines, as it had been doing for the first half of the twentieth century. A factory was opened in Mexico. This is in addition to the pump and engine division, which produced Canadian Fairbanks-Morse branded products for farms, factories and mines. In the US, Fairbanks-Morse became part of the Whitney gun machining enterprise in 1958.
Export offices were established in Rio de Janerio and Buenos Aires. The model Z engines continued to be built into the 1970s in Mexico. An Australian branch factory, similar to the Canadian Branch operation, was opened and the remote sheep stations benefited from their reliable products. It dated from 1902, when Cooper Sheep Shearing Machinery Ltd was set up in Sydney, and became an agent for Fairbanks-Morse in that Hemisphere.
The company sold and updated the Eclipse model of windpumps in North America until they became obsolete with widespread rural electrification in the 1940s. Low cost, readily available electricity from the grid eliminated the need for local power production by small and medium diesel plants. While many Fairbanks engines dutifully served into the late twentieth century, modernization, plant closures, and electricity were too much competition. The company was restructured and in 1988, F. Norden, a majority shareholder in the US scale franchise, bought back the Fairbanks Scale business and its assets in Kansas and Mississippi.
[edit] References
- Fairbanks-Morse 38D8 Diesel Engine. PSRM Diesel Locomotives. Retrieved on January 1, 2006.
- Pinkepank, Jerry A. (1973). The Second Diesel Spotter's Guide. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Milwaukee, WI. ISBN 0-89024-026-4.
- Wendel, C.H. (1993). Fairbanks Morse: 100 Years of Engine Technology (reprint). Stemgas Publishing Co., Lancaster, PA.
- Wendel, C.H. (1987). Power in the Past, Vol. 2; A History of Fairbanks-Morse and Co. (reprint). Stemgas Publishing Co., Lancaster, PA.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Fairbanks-Morse official website
- Fairbanks Scale website
- Fairbanks Morse Pumps in Kansas
- C H Morse museum
