Capital Screw and Nut connects with York County PA’s factory history

Sixty-five years ago, John and Eunice Taylor formed a fastener distributorship that later settled in a place with a pedigree for serving customers.

In 1980, their Capital Screw and Nut Co. moved into old red-brick trolley and bus operating barns on Hartley Street, with a former operations office tower above and streetcar maintenance pits below.

They knew their business. In 1950, they had moved from the Connecticut manufacturing city of New Britain to York, with its equal savvy in making things.

The high ceilings in the streetcar barns meant they could stack racks and buckets of millions of metal fasteners high in space formerly occupied by overhead wires that delivered electricity to the trolley poles that quietly powered these clanking streetcars.

The Taylors operated in their wheelhouse, supplying drill bits, threaded rods, anchor bolts and wooden screws to, as the company’s website states, “build, make, and secure everything from airplanes, autos, and bridges to sculptures, tools, and tractors.”

There they were in the former shops of electric-powered and then internal combustion machines that rolled around a manufacturing county filled with makers of big, heavy things: air conditioners that could chill the Chunnel, barbells that would create Olympic champions, earth-moving equipment that could move mountains and the heavy motorcycles that became America’s brand.

Their Hartley Street business sat squarely in The Avenues, a streetcar neighborhood of working-class and executive homes that went up along the trolley line. The streetcar rides enabled people to live far away from their employer in the days before the automobile.

For years, Capital Screw and Nut typified the old factory town of York, buying large quantities of hardware directly from factories across the U.S. and distributing it in smaller units to customers in York County and beyond.

And still does.

The other day, the Taylors’ daughter, Marianne Clay, sat behind the desk in the former operations center that a century ago kept trolleys carrying 11 million riders annually on the rails, extending from York Haven to Littlestown and Dover to Bittersville, east of Windsor.

She was doing estimates for customers that would generate orders that are typically in the thousands of units. An order for 40,000 screws is not unusual.

A former York Daily Record reporter, magazine writer and nonprofit staffer, she became active in the family business about three years ago. She faced an immense learning curve, doing the books after studying how her late mother kept accounts for years.

She found time to set up a small museum in a passage from the customer service area to the company’s office, complete with Benson W. Rohrbeck’s much-cited “York County Trolleys” book and a York Fair poster. During fair week a century ago, the trolley company deployed everything that would roll to transport thousands of fairgoers to and from the fair.

Why has she taken on the challenge of operating a distributor of almost infinite variations of machined pieces for customers as varied as roofers, construction companies, hand-done furniture makers and casket makers?

It’s York County’s trolley history, for sure. She mentioned a couple of times that she’s hoping to go through the 40 boxes of documents about the trolley company at the York County History Center archives. She’s been through at least one and is eager to pore through more.

She noted with sadness about one thing she’s learned: that when the trolleys stopped rolling in 1939, many cars were burned. Two remain for public viewing today. One runs at the Rockhill Trolley Museum in Huntingdon County. The other is on display at the history center’s Agricultural and Industrial Museum.

That document exploration will have to wait because those archives are moving, coincidentally, to the former Met-Ed steam plant on West Philadelphia Street this summer. That plant powered the trolleys from 1892 to 1939. In fact, the York County Traction Co. and York Railways at one time owned the old steam plant, the streetcar appetite for electricity so great.

Then there are Capital’s customers and their kindness. Some of those placing orders are akin to family to this family-run business. Clay says some come in asking for a bolt, and they’ll say: “I know where it is. I’ll get it.”

Knowing where things are among millions of pieces in old car barns the size of a football field — or maybe more than one — is challenging.

“You’ll see,” she said. “You walk miles to find a screw.”

Capital’s four employees know their way around. As you walk through the office, you hear discussions about customer requests. Those calling query employees about a bolt of a certain length. Or a particular thread. Or request a certain type of metal.

The amount of detail that they need to know about fasteners is unlimited. And then where to find it in the barns. Or how to order it if it’s not in stock.

York has been called America’s largest small town. That goes for the relationships of the iconic companies, large and small, doing business here, then and now. After six decades, Capital is one of those companies.

Clay introduces employee Greg Ness with the highest praise for someone in his occupation: “If you want to know where things are, ask him.”

Ness is a machinist by training and later branched out to marketing and engineering.

Some of his ancestors predate the Revolutionary War in York County, the earliest trained as a blacksmith.

This Capital employee of three years stands in one of the cavernous barns with its three sets of tracks still visible in the floor, leading to and from the original wooden car barn doors. He knows where things are in this vast space, but still learns something new every day.

“It comes natural for me, somehow,” he says about his work.

His family line might answer the “somehow.” It started with the pioneering blacksmith. And continued through his great-grandfather Edward Ness.

Edward Ness worked for the York trolley company.

There’s another reason that Clay is at Capital’s controls after a successful career in other fields. She operates the business, a “moderately profitable” enterprise, in memory of her father and mother and her family.

She carries on the business with pride — pride in the county and its history that her parents appreciated so much. And she readily cites what customers have told family members since 1959: “If you can’t find it at Capital, you don’t need it.”

Jim McClure is a retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at [email protected].