Vulcan Iron Works.

The Vulcan Iron Works was founded by Richard Jones in 1849 at South Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. The firm specialized in the manufacture of shaft hoists and other machinery to serve the Wyoming Valley's burgeoning anthracite coal industry. It was incorporated on April 11, 1867. In 1888, Vulcan acquired the Wyoming Valley Manufacturing Company, incorporated on April 5, 1867, a builder of mine and industrial locomotives.

Vulcan's locomotives were designed for mine, logging, plantation and factory work, including steam, electric and battery models for underground haulage. A large number were sold to strip mine and earth moving contractors. The company did a modest export business to Canada, Latin America, Russia and East Asia.

Vulcan's other product lines consisted primarily of material movement and processing machinery: hoisting engines, shaft cages, bucket elevators, crushers, picking tables and jigs for separating slate from coal, as well as mine fans. Most were sold to coal mining firms in the Appalachian coal fields and to remote operations of firms like Bethlehem Steel that were headquartered in Pennsylvania. It also sold grinding mills and rotary kilns to the portland cement industry that grew up on the southeastern border of the anthracite fields as well as some sugarcane processing machinery in Louisiana and Cuba.

The collapse of the anthracite industry in the 1930s destroyed a large part of the company's market, and heavy trucks gradually replaced locomotives in stripping and construction haulage. Locomotive production ended with builder's number 4877 in May 1949. Machinery production continued into the mid-1950s.

From the description of Records, 1884-1948. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 650283004