page_title: Robey & Co
section_title: Portable Engines
hierarchical_section_title: Robey & Co / Robey’s Engineering Products / Portable Engines
caption_attribution_description: English: A portable compound steam engine by Messrs. Robey &amp; Co Ltd, Lincoln, England, typical of those produced by the company in the mid-1890s.
context_page_description: Robey and Co. was an engineering company based in Lincoln, England which can be traced back to at least 1849.
  In 1854 Watkinson and Robey Engineers and Millwrights were manufacturing Portable Engines and machinery of every description in Rumbold Street, Lincoln. They were joined by George Lamb Scott, but in 1855 Watkinson, who had previously worked for Clayton & Shuttleworth of Lincoln, left the company. The business then became Robey and Scott and moved their premises by 1856 to Canwick Road, Lincoln. Another partner, Thomas Gamble, joined the firm and Scott resigned in September 1856 to found his own manufacturing company in Manchester. The company then became Gamble & Robey, but by 1868 was known as Robey & Co Ltd.
  Robert Robey died in 1876 and the firm continued as a partnership led by John Richardson. In 1893 Robey & Co became a limited company. By 1913 Robeys were makers of steam motor wagons, tractors and ploughs and in the First World War manufactured aircraft. The company was purchased by Babcock International in 1984.
context_section_description: An early report of a Robey portable engine was in July 1855 when the Stamford Mercury reported Messrs. Robey and Scott, of St. Rumbold's lane Foundry, on Monday 1st sent off for the Crimea a tenhorse power high pressure portable steam-engine. It single-cylinder engine, and ……would be adapted to bear the rough usage it will have to encounter. It understood that to be put to the various purposes and to supply the troops with bread. 
  Portable engines continued to be made until the 1940s. It was from Portable Engines that Traction engines were developed.
caption: Messrs. Robey & Co Ltd, Lincoln portable compound engine 1890s
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