Grace's Guide
British Industrial History
Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 138,848 pages of information and 225,307 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.
Alfred Dodman and Co
From Graces Guide
Alfred Dodman and Co were producers of engines, boilers and castings at King's Lynn.
1854 Alfred Dodman founded Highgate Works at King's Lynn.
1872 Built first traction engines, hoist and marine engines.
1875 He moved to the Highgate Works, adjacent to Highgate Bridge and with a siding connection to the dock railway.
1876 Exhibitor at the Royal Agricultural Show at Birmingham with a vertical engine. [1]
1877 Exhibitor at the 1877 Royal Agricultural Show at Liverpool.[2].
1882 Produced an improved traction engine.
1895 Advertisement shows examples of their boilers, stationary engines, portable engines, launch engines, winding engines, and gears.
1896 Built two railway locomotives. Dodmans had considerable experience with road traction engines and occasionally repaired shunting engines for local companies such as the West Norfolk Farmers' Manure & Chemical Co. Ltd. Mr Burkitt's was the first, and probably the only, order they received for a new railway locomotive. For the general design and proportions, advice was sought from a Mr S. Stone of the GER's Stratford locomotive works, while the details, apart from the wheels, were worked out by Mr Dodman himself, who made use of traction engine components wherever possible. Frederick Savage, a neighbouring King's Lynn engineer, was well known as a builders of fairground engines and may have been involved. "Gazelle" was very small, and often described as a toy, model or miniature engine.
1897 The firm was re-organised as a limited company.
1903 Issued illustrated engine catalogue, B edition.[3]
1906 Producing a range of oil engines sized from 2 to 20 bhp.
1912? Two Horizontal Engines with gear drive for Wisbech Waterworks (Marham Station).
1925 Cornish boiler for Lower Padnal.[4]
1931 (1929?) Purchased E. S. Hindley and Sons and concentrated on oil engines.
1975 Company ceased trading?
See Also
Sources of Information
- Traction Engine Album by Malcolm Ranieri. Pub 2005
- [1] Colonel Stephens Museum
- British Steam Locomotive Builders by James W. Lowe. Published in 1975. ISBN 0-905100-816
- The Steam Engine in Industry by George Watkins in two volumes. Moorland Publishing. 1978. ISBN 0-903485-65-6
- Steam Engine Builders of Norfolk by Ronald H. Clark. Published 1948 by The Augustine Steward Press
- ↑ The Engineer of 21st July 1876 p40
- ↑ The Engineer 1877/07/13
- ↑ The Engineer 1903/05/29, p 558
- ↑ * Fenland Pumping Engines by K. S. G. Hinde, Landmark Publishing Co., 2006 ISBN 1 84306 188 0