To accommodate their expanding business, which, in addition to 

 sugar mills, included steamboat and stationary engines, machine 

 tools, and rolling mills, the Niles brothers built a new machine shop 

 on East Front Street at the drainage canal, formerly Deer Creek, 

 convenient to the river and the shipyards at nearby Fulton. The 

 Cincinnati Gazette of October 21, 1845, noted that the shop was 

 nearly complete. The main building measured 40 by 105 feet; a 

 foundry and blacksmith shop were on the first level and a machine 

 shop on the upper stories. It was further reported that about 150 

 men would be regularly employed. 



The Niles brothers did well in their new establishment and in the 

 next few years became one of the largest and most affluent manufac- 

 turers in the city. Their prosperity prompted them to take on new 

 and promising lines of work. Undoubtedly they observed the large 

 business of their neighbor, Anthony Harkness, and, with many 

 others, were stimulated by the growing demand for locomotive 

 engines. As early as August 5, 1850, J. L. Whetstone wrote to 

 G. E. Sellers, "Niles is going into the Locomotive business and I 

 think Greenwood has strong notions the same way .... He says 

 Askew is very keen to go into the locomotive business." ^^^ 



Apparently no locomotive work was actually undertaken uniil 

 almost a year later. The first mention of such activity is an item 

 in the Cincinnati Enquirer of April 18, 1851, which states that the 

 Madison and Indianapolis Railroad had contracted with Niles for 

 two locomotives to be delivered in October. In the same article the 

 Enquirer notes that "Messrs. Niles & Co. have recently added largely 

 to their before extensive establishment" and indicates that the 

 Madison and Indianapolis order was Niles' first contract for a 

 locomotive: "To their neiv enterprise we certainly wish them every 

 success" [italics supplied]. A letter dated August 31, 1851, from 

 Coleman to his brother George Sellers, also indicates that Niles had 

 taken up railroad work, for Coleman mentions that he had hoped 

 to find a tender-truck pedestal pattern suitable for the Panama 

 Railroad engines among those on hand at the Niles shop. 



1^-^ Peale-Sellers papers. The Cincinnati Gazette for August 8, 1851, also notes that 

 Greenwood was contemplating the manufacture of locomotives, but there is no 

 evidence that he engaged in such work beyond the part he played in the construc- 

 tion of the Sellers engines for the Panama Railroad. 



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