Inventive James Martin builds 100 locomotives during the 1890s peak of industry for South Australia's Gawler
A crowd in the town of Gawler on April 11, 1890, greets the first locomotive made at the local workshop of James Martin & Co.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
James Martin’s engineering firm built 100 railway locomotives in the 1890s peak of late 19th Century industrial phase for the town of Gawler, north of Adelaide. Martin was among thousands of Cornish immigrants who, attracted by South Australia’s mining, made a special contribution to the colony.
Martin’s grandfather set up a foundry in the village of Foundry, Cornwall, where James was born in 1821. Apprenticed to a millwright, Martin had little formal education but was innovative. His model for a “man engine” or lift was widely adopted to save lives in mine shafts.
Martin arrived in South Australia on the Belle Alliance in 1847, seeking better opportunities and relief from asthma. He worked for miller and inventor John Ridley but local legend has him moving north to Gawler in 1848 in a dray carrying his wife, furniture and tools. He felled a red gum by Galton Street and made his first lathe.
As a blacksmith, he tackled anything with quality work. He began making farm implements, bullock drays and iron work. James Martin & Co. expanded to other towns such as Quorn and Gladstone. In 1874, he joined with skilful Frederick May and began making mining machinery before moving into railway rolling stock.
In 1888, Martin won a South Australia government contract of £167,000 for 52 locomotives. He built many more that steamed all over Australia. A rail line was built to his Phoenix Foundry in the heart of Gawler that, in 1898, covered 18 acres and employed 700. Other smaller local foundries, such as the May Brothers, were competitors.
Martin was Gawler mayor several times and MP for Barossa and North-Eastern Province where he achieved the Barossa Reservoir that supplied Gawler and district in 1902. When Martin died in 1899, his nephew John took over James Martin & Co that declined amid a changing economy in the 1900s and was eventually absorbed by Perry Engineering.
