Sharp Brothers (Manchester)

Sharp Brothers was a Manchester locomotive builder operating the Atlas Works at Great Bridgewater Street from 1828, a direct successor of Sharp, Roberts and Co. and an early specialist in the standardised 'contractor-built' locomotive type that served British and overseas railways before the major railway companies had established their own manufacturing works. Founded by Thomas and John Sharp after the dissolution of the Sharp Roberts partnership, the firm built locomotives to its own standardised designs — 'Sharp's Patent' types — which became recognisable and widely used across the early railway network.

The firm's standardised approach to locomotive building — producing essentially catalogue products rather than bespoke designs for individual customers — was a commercial innovation that prefigured the Victorian locomotive builder's standard practice of supplying proven designs to multiple customers with minimal modification. The Atlas Works produced locomotives for British main-line railways in the critical early expansion period of the 1830s and early 1840s, when established works like Robert Stephenson and Company were oversubscribed and several of the early railways needed to source from alternative builders.

The firm reorganised as Sharp Brothers and Co. in 1843 and after Thomas Sharp's death became Sharp, Stewart and Co. — the firm that eventually relocated to Glasgow and amalgamated into the North British Locomotive Company in 1903, completing a lineage of locomotive manufacturing continuity stretching from the earliest days of the railway age.