Pressed Steel Car Company
The Pressed Steel Car Company was a builder of railroad cars and equipment based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that was founded in 1899, and had facilities in Pittsburgh and Chicago. It operated until 1956.
Before World War II
The Pressed Steel Car Company of Pittsburgh came into existence 17 February 1899 and was an amalgamation of the Schoen Pressed Steel Company, Pittsburgh, and the British company, the Fox Solid Pressed Steel Company, set up in 1889 in Joliet, 30 miles southwest of Chicago.In April 1899, it had three plants: The Schoen plant at Woods Run in Allegheny, Pennsylvania; the Fox steel plant on McCandless Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Fox steel plant in Joliet, Illinois. Approximately one month after forming, a deal was announced that the Pressed Steel Car Company would purchase all of its steel from the Carnegie Steel Company, and Carnegie would stop making cars. At first the company only produced freight cars, but in 1903 it delivered 35 steel underframe passenger cars to the North Western Elevated Railway of Chicago, and then set up a shop just for passenger car manufacturing in less than two years.
In 1909, the Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909 occurred, when 8,000 workers at the McKees Rocks plant went on strike. In 1914 the company manufactured 12,000 cars of differing varieties, for Russia. By 1916 it produced a new car approximately every five minutes and was the largest car plant in the United States. In early July 1936, the company filed for bankruptcy due to decreased earnings, debt and the inability to sell funding stock. On July 24, 1936, it was incorporated as the Pressed Steel Car Company, Inc. As of May 17, 1938, it employed 2,000 employees, as well as 1, 225 employees in subsidiary companies.