The company was founded in 1898 by Timothy Cagney and his brothers David and John, after they had run a ticket brokerage company known as Cagney Bros. in New York in the early 1890s. They had begun building steam locomotives in 1894, and their popular gauge 4-4-0 was a crude replica of New York Central and Hudson River Railroad No. 999, the first in the world to travel over 100 mph. They lived in Jersey City, but their office was at 301, 407 and finally 74 Broadway in New York, until it was relocated to New Jersey. The locomotives were manufactured by the McGarigle Machine Company initially in Niagara Falls, New York and later in Jersey City. This company belonged to Thomas and Peter McGarigle, whose sister Winifred was married to Timothy Cagney. The two companies worked very closely together for several years on various projects. Their Class C was gauge, their Class D, which was upgraded in 1903, was gauge and their Class E, which was introduced in 1904, was gauge. By the 1920s the Cagney Bros. had absorbed the miniature railway portion of the McGarigle Machine Company under the name of The Cagney Brothers' Amusement Company Niagara Falls Plant. In total, the group of companies built about 1300 locomotives in many different sizes and gauges, before it went out if business in 1948.
Product range
The company's speciality was the manufacture of light steam locomotives with varying sizes and designs for many gauges, wide or narrow. The locomotives were well adapted for industrial purposes, where ordinary locomotives were unsuitable or too expensive. Logging railroads of the Miniature Railway Co. were in use in the southern Atlantic and Gulf states, the northern lake districts and on the Pacific coast. They were exported to the United Kingdom, Latin America, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. Two of Cagney's most important installations were two gold-plated trains with steam locomotives built for the King of Siam, and the Trip Around the World exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair at a cost of $200.000. One locomotive was exported in 1902 to the Blakesley Miniature Railway in Northamptonshire in the vicinity of Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke's company Miniature Railways of Great Britain Ltd in Northampton, which began in 1904 to manufacture their own series of gauge locomotives. One gauge model locomotive and three carriages for 18 passengers was exported in 1906 to Australia, to run in circles on Manly’s beachfront.
The Miniature Railway Company obtained the probably smallest locomotive ever made for drawing passenger cars from Thomas E. McGarigle of Niagara Falls. This steam locomotive was used from June 1 to November 1 of 1898 at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska, and, in all, six locomotives were ordered by the company under one contract. The height of the locomotive from the surface of the rail to the top of the stack was, and the gauge was
The Cagney brothers built and operated a gauge miniature railway at the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo, New York, United States, from May 1 until November 2, 1901. With a ticket that cost 10 cents, passengers could board small, open cars and ride on six sections to the end of the line. The coal-heated steam locomotives of the Class D series had diameter driving wheels, a weight of and a height of from the surface of the rail track to the top of the smokestack. They had a Kortling injector and a special pump. The cylinders were. The boiler was made of best quality thick steel, held of water and was tested to. It had a diameter of and held of water. The tubes were long and the fire box was long. The tender was of the two-truck type with diameter wheels and had a length of and a width of. It was made from iron and supplied with wrench, shovel, flue cleaner and rake. It had a capacity of and a weight of. The total length of locotive and tender was. Two different types of cars for two or eight passengers were used. The larger cars were each long and wide, and provided 8 seats for adults, if two passengers sat side by side.
At the Charleston Exposition from December 1, 1901 to June 20, 1902 the lilliputian railways installed by the Miniature Railway Co. comprised one of the most popular attractions and best-paying amusement features on the grounds. The routes touched all points of interest from the Sunken Gardens and the Court of Palaces to the hoky-pokydance floor in the headquarters. Patrons found these baby trains an indispensable convenience as well as a joyful novelty in the manner of transportation. The outfit consisted of a locomotive and tender, with a total length or, weighing, and cars long and wide, weighing each, all as complete in detail and as business-like in aspect as a transcontinental express. The difference, and that was in favor of the Lilliput, was that on this ideal system there were no baggage-men to badger one, no porters that one must tip, nor any man with a megaphone voice to assail one with magazines and samples of chewing gum.
In 1903 the Cagney Bros. Co. built the long miniature railroad on the grounds of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and operated this from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Timothy Cagney was listed as President, and Peter McGarigle as Chief Engineer. They operated twenty gauge 4-4-0s and four gauge 4-4-0s as public transportation on the fairgrounds.
