Clyde Engineering was an Australian manufacturer of locomotives, rolling stock, and other industrial products. Its origins began with ‘Hudson Brothers,’ a small woodworking shop in Redfern in 1855, with William Henry Hudson at its helm. Initially the company designed and manufactured windmills and ploughs, and landed iconic projects like the Great Hall at Sydney University and the Garden Palace Exhibition Building (1879). A significant shift in focus came in 1876 when the business won a contract to build rolling railway stock for the NSW Government, signaling its move from woodwork to metalwork. The company’s growth was meteoric, and by 1883, Hudson Brothers had relocated and built a new factory on a huge 200-acre site at Granville, in Sydney’s western suburbs. However, the 1890s recession was brutal, and by 1898, the Hudson Brothers had entered liquidation. Out of the ashes rose Clyde Engineering in 1898, with William Hudson remaining involved as a board member. The company won contracts for railway rolling stock, a sewerage system, trams, water handling products, water meters and agricultural machinery. In 1907 it won its first contract for steam locomotives for the New South Wales Government Railways. By 1923 it had 2,200 employees. After contracting during the depression, it became a major supplier of munitions during World War II. Apart from building locomotives and rolling stock, Clyde Engineering diversified into telephone and industrial electronic equipment, machine tools, domestic aluminum ware, road making and earth making equipment, hydraulic pumps, product finishing equipment, filtration systems, boilers, power stations and firing equipment, car batteries, hoists and cranes, door and curtain tracks and motor vehicle distribution. In July 1996 it was taken over by Evans Deakin Industries and then absorbed by Downer Group to form Downer EDI. Water Meters Water meters of various sizes and designs were manufactured by the company. This product line appears to have been introduced in the early 1920s. The company soon realised that this was going to be a very lucrative market supplying water meters to various state and local authorities. Therefore they set up a dedicated department in the upper level of the Machine Shop. Sales material of the time gave customers the following assurance: "Our Water Meter Department has been carefully laid out and equipped with every modern convenience for the production of Water Meters on a very large scale, and a large and highly specialised staff is engaged solely in this class of work. By 1924 major contracts were being won as described in the press of June 1924". "The annual contract for the supply of water meters and hydraulic valves to the Water Board, was granted to the Clyde Engineering Co. Ltd., yesterday. The sum of £30,000 is involved". Two types of water meter were manufactured: the ordinary type and the full-way flanged type. The ordinary meters were produced for domestic usage being fitted to the water inlet at the front of suburban homes. These were manufactured in sizes from ½ up to 2in. and were pipe mounted. The fullway meters were larger and designed to measure much higher flows than could be handled by the ordinary type and were mainly used in industrial applications such as factories and warehouses. These flange-mounted meters were also more complex as they included a dirt box, a hydraulic valve and a bye-pass meter. These were manufactured in sizes from 2 up to 6in., the largest of which could cope with up to 80,000 gallons per hour at 20psi. Many thousands of water meters were produced over time and this product came to an end with the outbreak of WWII, with the company refocusing on lucrative war related products. Based on the HWMM's collection and available data, there was commonality with other prominent Australian meter manufacturer's pre 1940's residential water meter inferential/turbine type specification. It appears a common meter was shared between 5 prominent manufacturers of the day and then individually customized with company names and logos. Clyde Engineering appears to have introduced its own positive displacement design water meter in the 1940's or after WW2, adopting the nutating disc principle already widely used by many USA manufacturers. Manufacturing of Clyde water meters appears to have ended in 1945-1950's. Very little information remains on the company's water meter operations. The H.W.M. Museum has a rare 3/4" meter in its collection. (Extracts courtesy of David Jehan's book and Alex Manu's research).