MADE IN HAMILTON
19TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 16
GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY WORKS, c. 1854

A complex of factory buildings once stood on the flat expanse of land on the south side of the railway tracks. The Great Western Railway (GWR) was Hamilton's first truly major industrial employer. The company constructed large workshops in the early 1850s in which to build their rolling stock. At first, space in these shops was leased to local manufacturers contracted by the company.

Once the railway was operational, the company took control of the shops. They hired men with years of experience on British railways to run them. These new "mechanical superintendents" brought with them legions of skilled British craftsmen. Their skills estab-lished the GWR shop "on the leading edge of mechanical innovation" in the country. These shops employed hundreds of men at a time when the average Hamilton industry employed fewer than twenty.

Workers used modern machinery such as steam-hammers and huge wheel lathes. But production here was a far cry from the assembly line of the 20th century. By and large, GWR workers stuck to the traditional work practices of their individual crafts. Production in the GWR shops peaked in the early 1870s. The shops operated for a number of years after the Grand Trunk acquired the GWR in 1882, but closed for good in 1888.

Many skilled workers in the locomotive and car shops were organized as a branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, one of the few British-based international unions ever to organize in Canada.