Foster, Rastrick & Co.

Foster, Rastrick and Co. was a Stourbridge ironworks partnership between the industrialist James Foster and the engineer John Urpeth Rastrick that produced two of the most historically significant early steam locomotives: Agenoria, which worked the Shutt End Railway in Staffordshire from 1829 until around 1864, and the Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive to operate commercially in North America. Both were built at the Stourbridge Engine Works in 1829, in the same year as the Rainhill Trials, making Foster Rastrick one of the most productive early locomotive builders in Britain.

The Stourbridge Lion was built for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company of Pennsylvania and shipped to the United States, where it made the first commercial steam railway run in North America at Honesdale, Pennsylvania on 8 August 1829 — the same year that Rocket won at Rainhill. The locomotive proved too heavy for the American track and was removed from service, but its historical significance as the first steam locomotive in North America is undisputed. Rastrick's role as both a locomotive builder and as one of the three judges at the Rainhill Trials (alongside John Kennedy and Nicholas Wood) gives him an unusual dual position in the story of early railway development — simultaneously a competitor in the locomotive-building market and an evaluator of the competition.

Agenoria, the Stourbridge Lion's domestic counterpart, worked the Shutt End Railway for Lord Dudley from 1829 until approximately 1864 — a working life of 35 years that was remarkable for any early steam locomotive. She is preserved at the National Railway Museum, York, the oldest surviving product of the Foster Rastrick works and one of the oldest complete steam locomotives in existence.