The original Avonside Engine Company was based in St Philips, Bristol, and founded in 1837 as Henry Stothert and Company. This firm had got into financial difficulties and was liquidated in the 1880s. A new company was formed using the Avonside name as the Avonside Locomotive Works, initially at St Philips, before the company moved to Fishponds in 1905. The capital for the new factory in Fishponds was provided by Ronald Murray, and the facility was set up to build 16 locomotives a year. The company used the shunting line into Fishponds railway station and onto the Midland line in order to get their engines onto the mainline and onto their customers.
Locomotive production
The company carried on the previous firm's policy of concentrating on smaller engine types of various gauges, and saw some success in exporting their locomotives all over the world as far afield as South America. One such customer was the Guaqui–La Paz Railway in Bolivia. Other engines built for overseas included a Heisler locomotive, developed for use on sugar estates in hot climes. Closer to home, locomotives were supplied to the War Department in 1915, fitted with Parsons four-cylinder internal combustion engines. The type was popular, Cadburys of Bournville ordered an in 1926 and the Great Western Railway were supplied with six s in the 1920s. The Avonside Locomotive Works was badly affected by the 1930s Great Depression and went into voluntary liquidation in November 1934. The Fishponds plant and buildings were sold off in 1935 and the goodwill, drawing and patterns purchased by the Hunslet Engine Company.
Surviving Fishponds-built Avonside locomotives
Several Fishponds-built Avonside locomotives remain, including:
Elidir a , one of Avonside's last locomotives built in 1933. Returned from preservation in Canada in 2006 and is now at the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway
Avonside "Portbury", built 1917 for the Inland Waterways and Docks. Acquired by Bristol Corporation Docks after the war and numbered S3. Donated to Bristol Museums she was restored to running condition in 1988. She is now in her original IW & D grey livery, No. 34.
Avonside locomotives preserved in Bolivia include:
Avonside #2049 from 1930,, FCG #8. Today she's static at Guaqui Locomotive Shed in Guaqui. Her wheels, cylinders and the frontal parts of its frame are missing.
