Which company built the Fairy Queen steam locomotive?

Kitson, Thompson and Hewitson built the Fairy Queen steam locomotive.

The Leeds-based English firm constructed the locomotive in 1855 for the East Indian Railway Company. It carried the company’s locomotive number 22 and was shipped to India, arriving in Calcutta during the same year. The builder’s name is often written with an ampersand as Kitson, Thompson & Hewitson.

The Fairy Queen was a broad-gauge 2-2-2 tank locomotive with two outside cylinders. It worked on early Indian railway duties, including light mail trains, passenger and freight services, troop trains during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and railway-construction work.

It is easy to choose another famous locomotive manufacturer, such as Beyer, Peacock or Baldwin, because both firms built important steam engines. They did not build the Fairy Queen. The Kitson company’s Leeds origins are central to the locomotive’s early British manufacturing history.