Seattle Car and Foundry Company

Published by a major early-20th-century manufacturer rather than an individual author, Seattle Car & Foundry Company, Catalogue No. 3, December, 1913 comes from a business founded in 1905 in Seattle. The company described itself as a Pacific Coast builder of railroad and logging equipment, with works in Renton, Washington, and branches in Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia.

By the time this catalog appeared in 1913, the company said it was serving customers not only across the Pacific Coast but also in Alaska, British Columbia, China, and other parts of the Orient. Its pages reflect that ambition, presenting logging cars, trucks, bunks, cabooses, dump cars, quarry cars, and other heavy equipment in a tone that is both technical and promotional.

The company later became part of a much larger industrial story. Historical accounts from PACCAR and HistoryLink note that Seattle Car and Foundry grew out of William Pigott Sr.'s Seattle Car Manufacturing Company and, in 1917, merged with Twohy Brothers to form Pacific Car and Foundry, one of the roots of today's PACCAR.