I was reading the Lives of Great Engineers of Ulster . The chapter I read on the train this morning was related to John Stevenson, the paragraph that interested me was related to his purchase of Marcus Ward's company which at the time in 1900 was situated at the Ulster Works site on the corner of Bankmore Street and the Dublin Road, a stones throw from where I sit every day.
The Belfast Library Board website has some beautiful examples of Marcus Ward's work. After John Stevenson purchased the company now called McCaw,Stevenson and Orr they won the contract to produce the boxes for a new Liverpool concern called Meccano, the contract then followed for Hornby trains when Meccano developed that line. The relationship lasted in to the 1970's.