For over 100 years the Ashton Valve company produced all kind of valves and gauges for the Railroad industry, marine shipping, steam cars, and boiler rooms. Through what history and images I've been able to find online I will try and tell you the history of the company and their importance in America's industrial age. Let's start with a brief history of the company. https://www.smokstak.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=338041&d=1561734973
Henry Ashton's "lock up pop safety valve" , invented in 1871, put the company on the map. It was a huge step in making boilers safer, as boiler explosions were a horrible problem in the mid 1800's. Attached is some information about the pop safety valve.
Here's a safety valve from circa 1874 given to me at the Yankee Steam Up a couple of years ago. And a couple of other safety valves the company made.
For 20 years the company produced vales of all types. In 1892 the entered the gauge market by purchasing the Boston Steam Gauge Company. Soon the company became as well known for their quality gauges as they were for their valves. Attached is a notice sent to all their customers about the Gauge company purchase.
Relief valves saved countless lives. This is good stuff. Many of those gauges are remarkably decorative. Fun to see things from the era when even mundane things were made handsome.
Classy is the word that comes to mind.And tasteful too. Check out this one by a competitor. https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/735/12981/3776704_1_x.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&version=1&width=512
They made it easy to repair a gauge, but how do you know it needs to be repaired? In the case of the gauges, the company offered a number of testing kits to see how accurate the gauges were.
Modern locomotives later sported multiple safety valves for extra assurance. Each valve was set at a slightly different pressure so that they didn't all lift at once and too rapidly deplete working steam pressure. I couldn't find a prototype photo on line, but this N&W Y3 model shows it. You can see four safety valves arrayed atop the boiler. The Y3 had a working pressure of 240 PSI; the Y5's and Y6's were increased to 300 PSI.
I can't help you with that Hardcoaler, but an engineer told me one of the things about an Ashton safety valve that made it different from other brands was the fact that the valve shut down in a few seconds after "popping", so the loss of steam was greatly decreased.
Many factories were purchased by the War Department during WWII and used to manufactures materials for the war effort. The Ashton Valve company was one of those. The continued to make gauges and safety valves, but now exclusively for Naval ships. The Defense Plant Corporation was the branch of the government assigned to this task. Here's a link to more information about them and a couple of letters that show the Ashton Valve's involvement. http://what-when-how.com/the-american-economy/defense-plant-corporation-dpc/
The company held many patents. Here are some of the Railroad patents. I'm not posting the written details of the patents but they can all be looked up on google patents.
There were a number of people who played major roles in the company's history. Here are some of them.
The company started out at 138 Pearl Street Boston but in less than a year was burned out by the Great Boston Fire of 1872. After a few years of moving around(2 more fires) they settled at 271 Franklin Street for the next 27 years. After the business outgrew the Franklin Street facility, the built a new building at 161 First Street in East Cambridge Mass. They merged with Crosby Valve during WWII and then in 1948 they moved to their final site in Wrentham,Ma.
