Ransomes & Rapier was a major British manufacturer of railway equipment and later cranes, from 1869 to 1987. Originally an offshoot of the major engineering company Ransome's it was based at Waterside Works in Ipswich, Suffolk.
Ransome's split
Ransomes & Rapier was formed in 1869 when four engineers, James Allen Ransome, his elder son, Robert James Ransome, Richard Christopher Rapier and Arthur Alec Bennett, left the parent firm by agreement to establish a new firm on a site on the River Orwell to continue the business of manufacturing railway equipment and other heavy works. in Buenos Aires, Argentina, manufactured by Ransomes & Rapier in 1927 at Ipswich. The year before J. A. Ransome's younger son, Allen Ransome, founded the saw-milling machinery business, A. Ransome & Co, in Chelsea London with a foundry in Battersea. These businesses, transferred to Newark-on-Trent in 1900, led at the outset of World War I to Ransome & Marles now part of Nippon Seikō Kabushiki-kaisha. R. C. Rapier had been head of Ransome's Orwell Works railway department since he joined the business in 1862. When the two businesses were split he became the engineering partner in the new firm known as Ransomes & Rapier at the Waterside Ironworks. A limited liability company was incorporated to own the firm on 17 April 1896 using the same name with the addition of Limited : Ransomes & Rapier Limited.
The first railway in China
Rapier himself took the leading part in the 1875 negotiation and construction by Ransomes & Rapier of China's first railway, the Woosung Road from Shanghai to Woosung. The railway opened in 1876 but was dismantled by the local government the following year because it had not received the necessary approvals. The firm also supplied railway turntables in the early to mid-1930s. During the First World War they produced shells, guns and tank turrets. The Stokes mortar was invented by managing director and chairman Sir Wilfred Stokes, knighted for the invention. His nephew Richard Rapier Stokes, MP was also managing director. The company merged with Newton, Chambers & Company of Sheffield and formed the NCK excavator division to form NCK-Rapier who built walking draglines used in opencast mining. Ransomes & Rapier built the model W1400 walking dragline called Sundew for The United Steel Companyiron ore quarry at Exton Park, Rutland, England. At the time it was built in 1951, it was the largest in the world, weighing in at 1880 tons. Ransomes & Rapier sold the right to their walking dragline technology and patents to Bucyrus International in 1988. The turntable used to turn the revolving restaurant on the BT Tower was also built by Ransomes & Rapier. Ransomes & Rapier closed in 1987.
