Kitson firm

Kitson and Co. of the Airedale Foundry, Leeds, was one of the major Victorian British locomotive builders, founded in 1838 by James Kitson and operating under successive names — Kitson, Thompson and Hewitson, then Kitson and Co. Ltd. — through a century of locomotive manufacture before financial difficulties brought the firm to receivership in 1934 and closure in 1938.

The Airedale Foundry was established in Leeds in 1838 and from the outset built locomotives for both British railway companies and for export, developing the broad customer base and technical versatility that characterised the most successful Victorian locomotive builders. Kitson's export business was particularly strong, supplying locomotives to railways in India, South America, Australia, and across the British Empire through the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

The firm's most technically distinctive contribution was the Kitson-Meyer articulated locomotive, developed in the 1890s as one of the early attempts to produce a powerful locomotive capable of navigating the sharp curves of mountain and industrial railways. The Kitson-Meyer used a pair of powered bogies pivoting independently under a single boiler — a configuration related to but distinct from the later and ultimately more successful Garratt articulated design. Several Kitson-Meyers worked in South America and on other narrow-gauge mountain railways. Kitson also supplied passenger locomotives to the Liverpool Overhead Railway's early fleet and built a range of small industrial 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 saddle tanks that served collieries and works across the north of England. The works closed in 1938 after a century of locomotive manufacturing at the same Leeds site.