Stephenson, John

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Stephenson's parents emigrated to the United States when he was 2 years old; he was educated in public schools in New York, where his parents had settled, and at a Wesleyan seminary. He became a clerk in a store at 16, but in 1828 he apprenticed himself to a coachbuilder, Andrew Wade, of Broome Street, New York. His apprenticeship lasted two years, during which time he learned mechanical drawing in the evenings and started to design vehicles. He was employed for a year on carriage repair work and in 1831 he opened his own coach repair business. Within a year he had built New York's first omnibus; this was bought by Abraham Brower, Stephenson's former employer, who started the city's first bus service. Brower immediately ordered a further three buses from Stephenson, and a further horse-drawn car was ordered by the New York \& Harlem Railroad. He built the car used at the opening of the railroad on 26 November 1832, the first street railway in the world. Orders followed for cars for many street railroads in other cities in the eastern States, and business prospered until the financial panic of 1837. Stephenson's factory was forced to close but he managed to pay off his creditors in the next six years and started in business again, building only omnibuses and coaches to become recognized as the world's foremost builder of streetcars. His first car had four flanged wheels, and a body of three compartments slung on leather straps from an unsprung chassis. He built horse-drawn cars, cable cars, electric and open cars; by 1891 his factory had 500 employees and was producing some twenty-five cars a week. His first patent had been dated 23 April 1833 and was followed by some ten others. During the Civil War, his factory was turned over to the manufacture of pontoons and gun carriages. He married Julia Tiemann in 1833; they had two sons and a daughter. He lived at New Rochelle, New York, from 1865 until his death.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

George Stephenson was the son of the fireman of the pumping engine at Wylam colliery, and horses drew wagons of coal along the wooden rails of the Wylam wagonway past the house in which he was born and spent his earliest childhood. While still a child he worked as a cowherd, but soon moved to working at coal pits. At 17 years of age he showed sufficient mechanical talent to be placed in charge of a new pumping engine, and had already achieved a job more responsible than that of his father. Despite his position he was still illiterate, although he subsequently learned to read and write. He was largely self-educated.

In 1801 he was appointed Brakesman of the winding engine at Black Callerton pit, with responsibility for lowering the miners safely to their work. Then, about two years later, he became Brakesman of a new winding engine erected by Robert Hawthorn at Willington Quay on the Tyne. Returning collier brigs discharged ballast into wagons and the engine drew the wagons up an inclined plane to the top of "Ballast Hill" for their contents to be tipped; this was one of the earliest applications of steam power to transport, other than experimentally.

In 1804 Stephenson moved to West Moor pit, Killingworth, again as Brakesman. In 1811 he demonstrated his mechanical skill by successfully modifying a new and unsatisfactory atmospheric engine, a task that had defeated the efforts of others, to enable it to pump a drowned pit clear of water. The following year he was appointed Enginewright at Killingworth, in charge of the machinery in all the collieries of the "Grand Allies", the prominent coal-owning families of Wortley, Liddell and Bowes, with authorization also to work for others. He built many stationary engines and he closely examined locomotives of John Blenkinsop's type on the Kenton \& Coxlodge wagonway, as well as those of William Hedley at Wylam.

It was in 1813 that Sir Thomas Liddell requested George Stephenson to build a steam locomotive for the Killingworth wagonway: Blucher made its first trial run on 25 July 1814 and was based on Blenkinsop's locomotives, although it lacked their rack-and-pinion drive. George Stephenson is credited with building the first locomotive both to run on edge rails and be driven by adhesion, an arrangement that has been the conventional one ever since. Yet Blucher was far from perfect and over the next few years, while other engineers ignored the steam locomotive, Stephenson built a succession of them, each an improvement on the last.

During this period many lives were lost in coalmines from explosions of gas ignited by miners' lamps. By observation and experiment (sometimes at great personal risk) Stephenson invented a satisfactory safety lamp, working independently of the noted scientist Sir Humphry Davy who also invented such a lamp around the same time.

In 1817 George Stephenson designed his first locomotive for an outside customer, the Kilmarnock \& Troon Railway, and in 1819 he laid out the Hetton Colliery Railway in County Durham, for which his brother Robert was Resident Engineer. This was the first railway to be worked entirely without animal traction: it used inclined planes with stationary engines, self-acting inclined planes powered by gravity, and locomotives.

On 19 April 1821 Stephenson was introduced to Edward Pease, one of the main promoters of the Stockton \& Darlington Railway (S \& DR), which by coincidence received its Act of Parliament the same day. George Stephenson carried out a further survey, to improve the proposed line, and in this he was assisted by his 18-year-old son, Robert Stephenson, whom he had ensured received the theoretical education which he himself lacked. It is doubtful whether either could have succeeded without the other; together they were to make the steam railway practicable.

At George Stephenson's instance, much of the S \& DR was laid with wrought-iron rails recently developed by John Birkinshaw at Bedlington Ironworks, Morpeth. These were longer than cast-iron rails and were not brittle: they made a track well suited for locomotives. In June 1823 George and Robert Stephenson, with other partners, founded a firm in Newcastle upon Tyne to build locomotives and rolling stock and to do general engineering work: after its Managing Partner, the firm was called Robert Stephenson \& Co.

In 1824 the promoters of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) invited George Stephenson to resurvey their proposed line in order to reduce opposition to it. William James, a wealthy land agent who had become a visionary protagonist of a national railway network and had seen Stephenson's locomotives at Killingworth, had promoted the L \& MR with some merchants of Liverpool and had carried out the first survey; however, he overreached himself in business and, shortly after the invitation to Stephenson, became bankrupt. In his own survey, however, George Stephenson lacked the assistance of his son Robert, who had left for South America, and he delegated much of the detailed work to incompetent assistants. During a devastating Parliamentary examination in the spring of 1825, much of his survey was shown to be seriously inaccurate and the L \& MR's application for an Act of Parliament was refused. The railway's promoters discharged Stephenson and had their line surveyed yet again, by C.B. Vignoles.

The Stockton \& Darlington Railway was, however, triumphantly opened in the presence of vast crowds in September 1825, with Stephenson himself driving the locomotive Locomotion, which had been built at Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s Newcastle works. Once the railway was at work, horse-drawn and gravity-powered traffic shared the line with locomotives: in 1828 Stephenson invented the horse dandy, a wagon at the back of a train in which a horse could travel over the gravity-operated stretches, instead of trotting behind.

Meanwhile, in May 1826, the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway had successfully obtained its Act of Parliament. Stephenson was appointed Engineer in June, and since he and Vignoles proved incompatible the latter left early in 1827. The railway was built by Stephenson and his staff, using direct labour. A considerable controversy arose c. 1828 over the motive power to be used: the traffic anticipated was too great for horses, but the performance of the reciprocal system of cable haulage developed by Benjamin Thompson appeared in many respects superior to that of contemporary locomotives. The company instituted a prize competition for a better locomotive and the Rainhill Trials were held in October 1829.

Robert Stephenson had been working on improved locomotive designs since his return from America in 1827, but it was the L \& MR's Treasurer, Henry Booth, who suggested the multi-tubular boiler to George Stephenson. This was incorporated into a locomotive built by Robert Stephenson for the trials: Rocket was entered by the three men in partnership. The other principal entrants were Novelty, entered by John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, and Sans Pareil, entered by Timothy Hackworth, but only Rocket, driven by George Stephenson, met all the organizers' demands; indeed, it far surpassed them and demonstrated the practicability of the long-distance steam railway. With the opening of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in 1830, the age of railways began.

Stephenson was active in many aspects. He advised on the construction of the Belgian State Railway, of which the Brussels-Malines section, opened in 1835, was the first all-steam railway on the European continent. In England, proposals to link the L \& MR with the Midlands had culminated in an Act of Parliament for the Grand Junction Railway in 1833: this was to run from Warrington, which was already linked to the L \& MR, to Birmingham. George Stephenson had been in charge of the surveys, and for the railway's construction he and J.U. Rastrick were initially Principal Engineers, with Stephenson's former pupil Joseph Locke under them; by 1835 both Stephenson and Rastrick had withdrawn and Locke was Engineer-in-Chief. Stephenson remained much in demand elsewhere: he was particularly associated with the construction of the North Midland Railway (Derby to Leeds) and related lines. He was active in many other places and carried out, for instance, preliminary surveys for the Chester \& Holyhead and Newcastle \& Berwick Railways, which were important links in the lines of communication between London and, respectively, Dublin and Edinburgh.

He eventually retired to Tapton House, Chesterfield, overlooking the North Midland. A man who was self-made (with great success) against colossal odds, he was ever reluctant, regrettably, to give others their due credit, although in retirement, immensely wealthy and full of honour, he was still able to mingle with people of all ranks.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

John Urpeth Rastrick, son of an engineer, was initially articled to his father and then moved to Ketley Ironworks, Shropshire, c. 1801. In 1808 he entered into a partnership with John Hazledine at Bridgnorth, Shropshire: Hazledine and Rastrick built many steam engines to the designs of Richard Trevithick, including the demonstration locomotive Catch-Me-Who-Can. The firm also built iron bridges, notably the bridge over the River Wye at Chepstow in 1815–16.

Between 1822 and 1826 the Stratford \& Moreton Railway was built under Rastrick's direction. Malleable iron rails were laid, in one of the first instances of their use. They were supplied by James Foster of Stourbridge, with whom Rastrick went into partnership after the death of Hazledine. In 1825 Rastrick was one of a team of engineers sent by the committee of the proposed Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) to carry out trials of locomotives built by George Stephenson on the Killingworth Waggonway. Early in 1829 the directors of the L \& MR, which was by then under construction, sent Rastrick and James Walker to inspect railways in North East England and report on the relative merits of steam locomotives and fixed engines with cable haulage. They reported, rather hesitantly, in favour of the latter, particularly the reciprocal system of Benjamin Thompson. In consequence the Rainhill Trials, at which Rastrick was one of the judges, were held that October. In 1829 Rastrick constructed the Shutt End colliery railway in Worcestershire, for which Foster and Rastrick built the locomotive Agenoria; this survives in the National Railway Museum. Three similar locomotives were built to the order of Horatio Allen for export to the USA.

From then until he retired in 1847 Rastrick found ample employment surveying railways, appearing as a witness before Parliamentary committees, and supervising construction. Principally, he surveyed the southern part of the Grand Junction Railway, which was built for the most part by Joseph Locke, and the line from Manchester to Crewe which was eventually built as the Manchester \& Birmingham Railway. The London \& Brighton Railway (Croydon to Brighton) was his great achievement: built under Rastrick's supervision between 1836 and 1840, it included three long tunnels and the magnificent Ouse Viaduct. In 1845 he was Engineer to the Gravesend \& Rochester Railway, the track of which was laid through the Thames \& Medway Canal's Strood Tunnel, partly on the towpath and partly on a continuous staging over the water.

[br]

See also: Stephenson, Robert

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

[br]

[br]

[br]

John Millington was Professor of Mechanics at the Royal Institution, London, from 1817 to 1829. He gave numerous courses on natural philosophy and mechanics and supported the introduction of coal gas for lighting. In 1823 he testified to a Select Committee of the House of Commons that the spread of gas lighting would greatly benefit the preservation of law and order, and with the same utilitarian and penal inclination he devised a treadmill for use in the Bedfordshire House of Correction. Millington was appointed the first Professor of Engineering and the Application of Mechanical Philosophy to the Arts at the newly founded University of London in 1828, but he speedily resigned from the post, preferring to go to Mexico in 1829. Like Trevithick and Robert Stephenson before him, he was attracted to the New World by the possibility of using new techniques to reopen old mines, and he became an engineer to some Mexican mining projects. In 1837 he went to Williamsburg in the United States, being appointed Professor of Chemistry, and it was there that he died in 1868. Millington wrote extensively on scientific subjects.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

In 1808 Blenkinsop became agent to J.C.Brandling, MP, owner of Middleton Colliery, from which coal was carried to Leeds over the Middle-ton Waggonway. This had been built by Brandling's ancestor Charles Brandling, who in 1758 obtained an Act of Parliament to establish agreements with owners of land over which the wagon way was to pass. That was the first railway Act of Parliament.

By 1808 horse haulage was becoming uneconomic because the price of fodder had increased due to the Napoleonic wars. Brandling probably saw the locomotive Catch-Me- Who-Can demonstrated by Richard Trevithick. In 1811 Blenkinsop patented drive by cog-wheel and rack rail, the power to be provided preferably by a steam engine. His object was to produce a locomotive able to haul a substantial load, while remaining light enough to minimize damage to rails made from cast iron which, though brittle, was at that date the strongest material from which rails could be made. The wagonway, formerly of wood, was relaid with iron-edge rails; along one side rails cast with rack teeth were laid beside the running surface. Locomotives incorporating Blenkinsop's cog-wheel drive were designed by Matthew Murray and built by Fenton Murray \& Wood. The design was developed from Trevithick's to include two cylinders, for easier starting and smoother running. The first locomotive was given its first public trial on 24 June 1812, when it successfully hauled eight wagons of coal, on to which fifty spectators climbed. Locomotives of this type entered regular service later in the summer and proved able to haul loads of 110 tons; Trevithick's locomotive of 1804 had managed 25 tons.

Blenkinsop-type locomotives were introduced elsewhere in Britain and in Europe, and those upon the Kenton \& Coxlodge Wagonway, near Newcastle upon Tyne, were observed by George Stephenson. The Middleton locomotives remained at work until 1835.

[br]

See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA

[br]

Abt, Roman

Ackermann, Rudolph

Adams, William Bridges

Albone, Daniel

Allen, Horatio

Aspinall, Sir John Audley Frederick

Austin, Herbert

Baldwin, Matthias William

Behr, Fritz Bernhard

Benz, Karl

Beyer, Charles Frederick

Blenkinsop, John

Booth, Henry

Borsig, Johann Carl Friedrich August

Bousquet, Gaston du

Bramah, Joseph

Brennan, Louis

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

Bulleid, Oliver Vaughan Snell

Burroughs, Michael

Bury, Edward

Butler, Edward

Caprotti, Arturo

Cardew, Philip

Chapelon, André

Churchward, George Jackson

Cooper, Peter

Crampton, Thomas Russell

Crompton, Rookes Evelyn Bell

Cugnot, Nicolas Joseph

Curr, John

Daft, Leo

Daimler, Gottlieb

Davidson, Robert

Dunlop, John Boyd

Duryea, Charles Edgar

Engerth, Wilhelm

England, George

Fairlie, Robert Francis

Ford, Henry

Forrester, George

Garratt, Herbert William

Gooch, Sir Daniel

Goodyear, Charles

Gregory, Sir Charles Hutton

Gresley, Sir Herbert Nigel

Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy

Hackworth, Timothy

Hamilton, Harold Lee

Hancock, Walter

Hansom, Joseph Aloysius

Haynes, Elwood

Hedley, William

Inoue Masaru

Issigonis, Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine

Ivatt, Henry Alfred

Jervis, John Bloomfield

Johnson, Samuel Waite

Joy, David

Kirtley, Matthew

Knight, John Peake

Krauss, Georg

Laithwaite, Eric Roberts

Lanchester, Frederick William

Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse

Locke, Joseph

McAdam, John Loudon

Macmillan, Kirkpatrick

MacNeill, Sir John Benjamin

Ma Jun

Mallet, Jules Théodore Anatole

Marcus, Siegfried

Marsh, Sylvester

Metcalf, John

Michaux, Pierre

Morris, William Richard

Moulton, Alexander

Murray, Matthew

Olds, Ransom Eli

Palmer, Henry Robinson

Palmer, John

Pihl, Carl Abraham

Porsche, Ferdinand

Pullman, George Mortimer

Ramsbottom, John

Rastrick, John Urpeth

Riggenbach, Niklaus

Rolls, The Hon. Charles Stewart

Royce, Sir Frederick Henry

Salomans, Sir David Lionel

Sauerbrun, Charles de

Saxby, John

Shaw, Percy

Shillibeer, George

Siemens, Dr Ernst Werner von

Sinclair, Sir Clive Maries

Sperry, Elmer Ambrose

Spooner, Charles Easton

Sprague, Frank Julian

Stanier, Sir William Arthur

Stephenson, George

Stephenson, John

Stephenson, Robert

Stevens, John

Stevenson, Robert

Thompson, Benjamin

Train, George Francis

Trésaguet, Pierre Marie Jerome

Trevithick, Richard

Tyer, Edward

Vauclain, Samuel Matthews

Vignoles, Charles Blacker

Volk, Magnus

Wankel, Felix

Webb, Francis William

Westinghouse, George

Winans, Ross

Wolseley, Frederick York

Woods, Granville

Worsdell, Nathaniel

Worsdell, Thomas William

See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA

[br]

Abt, Roman

Adams, William Bridges

Allen, Horatio

Aspinall, Sir John Audley Frederick

Baldwin, Matthias William

Behr, Fritz Bernhard

Beyer, Charles Frederick

Blenkinsop, John

Bodmer, Johann Georg

Booth, Henry

Borsig, Johann Carl Friedrich August

Bousquet, Gaston du

Brassey, Thomas

Brennan, Louis

Brotan, Johann

Brown, Charles Eugene Lancelot

Brunel, Isambard Kingdom

Bulleid, Oliver Vaughan Snell

Bury, Edward

Caprotti, Arturo

Cardew, Philip

Chapelon, André

Churchward, George Jackson

Clegg, Samuel

Cooper, Peter

Crampton, Thomas Russell

Cubitt, William

Curr, John

Daft, Leo

Davidson, Robert

Doane, Thomas

Engerth, Wilhelm

England, George

Ericsson, John

Fairlie, Robert Francis

Forrester, George

Fox, Sir Charles

Garratt, Herbert William

Gooch, Sir Daniel

Gregory, Sir Charles Hutton

Gresley, Sir Herbert Nigel

Hackworth, Timothy

Hamilton, Harold Lee

Hedley, William

Inoue Masaru

Ivatt, Henry Alfred

Janney, Eli Hamilton

Jervis, John Bloomfield

Jessop, William

Johnson, Samuel Waite

Joy, David

Kirtley, Matthew

Knight, John Peake

Krauss, Georg

Laithwaite, Eric Roberts

Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse

Lenoir, Jean Joseph Etienne

Locke, Joseph

MacNeill, Sir John Benjamin

Mallet, Jules Théodore Anatole

Marsh, Sylvester

Murray, Matthew

Outram, Benjamin

Page, Charles Grafton

Palmer, Henry Robinson

Pihl, Carl Abraham

Pullman, George Mortimer

Ramsbottom, John

Rastrick, John Urpeth

Reynolds, Richard

Riggenbach, Niklaus

Samuda, Joseph d'Aguilar

Saxby, John

Shaw, Percy

Schmidt, Wilhelm

Seguin, Marc

Siemens, Dr Ernst Werner von

Spooner, Charles Easton

Sprague, Frank Julian

Stanier, Sir William Arthur

Stephenson, George

Stephenson, John

Stephenson, Robert

Stevens, John

Stevenson, Robert

Thompson, Benjamin

Train, George Francis

Trevithick, Richard

Turner, Richard

Tyer, Edward

Vauclain, Samuel Matthews

Vignoles, Charles Blacker

Volk, Magnus

Webb, Francis William

Westinghouse, George

Winans, Ross

Woods, Granville

Worsdell, Nathaniel

Worsdell, Thomas William

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Hackworth trained under his father, who was Foreman Blacksmith at Wylam colliery, and succeeded him upon his death in 1807. Between 1812 and 1816 he helped to build and maintain the Wylam locomotives under William Hedley. He then moved to Walbottle colliery, but during 1824 he took temporary charge of Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s works while George Stephenson was surveying the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway and Robert Stephenson was away in South America. In May 1825 Hackworth was appointed to the Stockton \& Darlington Railway (S \& DR) "to have superintendence of the permanent (i.e. stationary) and locomotive engines". He established the workshops at Shildon, and when the railway opened in September he became in effect the first locomotive superintendent of a railway company. From experience of operating Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s locomotives he was able to make many detail improvements, notably spring safety valves. In 1827 he designed and built the locomotive Royal George, with six wheels coupled and inverted vertical cylinders driving the rear pair. From the pistons, drive was direct by way of piston rods and connecting rods to crankpins on the wheels, the first instance of the use of this layout on a locomotive. Royal George was the most powerful and satisfactory locomotive on the S \& DR to date and was the forerunner of Hackworth's type of heavy-goods locomotive, which was built until the mid-1840s.

For the Rainhill Trials in 1829 Hackworth built and entered the locomotive Sans Pareil, which was subsequently used on the Bol ton \& Leigh Railway and is now in the Science Museum, London. A working replica was built for the 150th anniversary of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in 1980. In 1833 a further agreement with the S \& DR enabled Hackworth, while remaining in charge of their locomotives, to set up a locomotive and engineering works on his own account. Its products eventually included locomotives for the London, Brighton \& South Coast and York, Newcastle \& Berwick Railways, as well as some of the earliest locomotives exported to Russia and Canada. Hackworth's son, John Wesley Hackworth, was also an engineer and invented the radial valve gear for steam engines that bears his name.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Vignoles, who was of Huguenot descent, was orphaned in infancy and brought up in the family of his grandfather, Dr Charles Hutton FRS, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. After service in the Army he travelled to America, arriving in South Carolina in 1817. He was appointed Assistant to the state's Civil Engineer and surveyed much of South Carolina and subsequently Florida. After his return to England in 1823 he established himself as a civil engineer in London, and obtained work from the brothers George and John Rennie.

In 1825 the promoters of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) lost their application for an Act of Parliament, discharged their engineer George Stephenson and appointed the Rennie brothers in his place. They in turn employed Vignoles to resurvey the railway, taking a route that would minimize objections. With Vignoles's route, the company obtained its Act in 1826 and appointed Vignoles to supervise the start of construction. After Stephenson was reappointed Chief Engineer, however, he and Vignoles proved incompatible, with the result that Vignoles left the L \& MR early in 1827.

Nevertheless, Vignoles did not sever all connection with the L \& MR. He supported John Braithwaite and John Ericsson in the construction of the locomotive Novelty and was present when it competed in the Rainhill Trials in 1829. He attended the opening of the L \& MR in 1830 and was appointed Engineer to two railways which connected with it, the St Helens \& Runcorn Gap and the Wigan Branch (later extended to Preston as the North Union); he supervised the construction of these.

After the death of the Engineer to the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway, Vignoles supervised construction: the railway, the first in Ireland, was opened in 1834. He was subsequently employed in surveying and constructing many railways in the British Isles and on the European continent; these included the Eastern Counties, the Midland Counties, the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyme \& Manchester (which proved for him a financial disaster from which he took many years to recover), and the Waterford \& Limerick. He probably discussed rail of flat-bottom section with R.L. Stevens during the winter of 1830–1 and brought it into use in the UK for the first time in 1836 on the London \& Croydon Railway: subsequently rail of this section became known as "Vignoles rail". He considered that a broader gauge than 4 ft 8½ in. (1.44 m) was desirable for railways, although most of those he built were to this gauge so that they might connect with others. He supported the atmospheric system of propulsion during the 1840s and was instrumental in its early installation on the Dublin \& Kingstown Railway's Dalkey extension. Between 1847 and 1853 he designed and built the noted multi-span suspension bridge at Kiev, Russia, over the River Dnieper, which is more than half a mile (800 m) wide at that point.

Between 1857 and 1863 he surveyed and then supervised the construction of the 155- mile (250 km) Tudela \& Bilbao Railway, which crosses the Cantabrian Pyrenees at an altitude of 2,163 ft (659 m) above sea level. Vignoles outlived his most famous contemporaries to become the grand old man of his profession.

[br]

See also: Samuda, Joseph d'Aguilar

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

[br]

[br]

[br]

R.L.Stevens was the son of John Stevens and was given the technical education his father lacked. He assisted his father with the Little Juliana and the Phoenix, managed the commercial operation of the Phoenix on the Delaware River, and subsequently built many other steamboats.

In 1830 he and his brother Edwin A.Stevens obtained a charter from the New Jersey Legislature for the Camden \& Amboy Railroad \& Transportation Company, and he visited Britain to obtain rails and a locomotive. Railway track in the USA then normally comprised longitudinal timber rails with running surfaces of iron straps, but Stevens designed rails of flat-bottom section, which were to become standard, and had the first batch rolled in Wales. He also designed hookheaded spikes for them, and "iron tongues", which became fishplates. From Robert Stephenson \& Co. (see Robert Stephenson) he obtained the locomotive John Bull, which was similar to the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway's Samson. The Camden \& Amboy Railroad was opened in 1831, but John Bull, a 0–4–0, proved over sensitive to imperfections in the track; Stevens and his mechanic, Isaac Dripps, added a two-wheeled non-swivelling "pilot" at the front to guide it round curves. The locomotive survives at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

[br]

See also: Adams, William Bridges( fishplates); Vignoles, Charles Blacker( flat-bottom rail).

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Fox was a pupil of John Ericsson, helped to build the locomotive Novelty, and drove it at the Rainhill Trials in 1829. He became a driver on the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway and then a pupil of Robert Stephenson, who appointed him an assistant engineer for construction of the southern part of the London \& Birmingham Railway, opened in 1837. He was probably responsible for the design of the early bow-string girder bridge which carried the railway over the Regent's Canal. He also invented turnouts with switch blades, i.e. "points". With Robert Stephenson he designed the light iron train sheds at Euston Station, a type of roof that was subsequently much used elsewhere. He then became a partner in Fox, Henderson \& Co., railway contractors and manufacturers of railway equipment and bridges. The firm built the Crystal Palace in London for the Great Exhibition of 1851: Fox did much of the detail design work personally and was subsequently knighted. It also built many station roofs, including that at Paddington. From 1857 Fox was in practice in London as a consulting engineer in partnership with his sons, Charles Douglas Fox and Francis Fox. Sir Charles Fox became an advocate of light and narrow-gauge railways, although he was opposed to break-of-gauge unless it was unavoidable. He was joint Engineer for the Indian Tramway Company, building the first narrow-gauge (3 ft 6 in. or 107 cm) railway in India, opened in 1865, and his firm was Consulting Engineer for the first railways in Queensland, Australia, built to the same gauge at the same period on recommendation of Government Engineer A.C.Fitzgibbon.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Booth followed his father as a Liverpool corn merchant but had great mechanical aptitude. In 1824 he joined the committee for the proposed Liverpool \& Manchester Railway (L \& MR) and after the company obtained its Act of Parliament in 1826 he was appointed Treasurer.

In 1829 the L \& MR announced a prize competition, the Rainhill Trials, for an improved steam locomotive: Booth, realizing that the power of a locomotive depended largely upon its capacity to raise steam, had the idea that this could be maximized by passing burning gases from the fire through the boiler in many small tubes to increase the heating surface, rather than in one large one, as was then the practice. He was apparently unaware of work on this type of boiler even then being done by Marc Seguin, and the 1791 American patent by John Stevens. Booth discussed his idea with George Stephenson, and a boiler of this type was incorporated into the locomotive Rocket, which was built by Robert Stephenson and entered in the Trials by Booth and the two Stephensons in partnership. The boiler enabled Rocket to do all that was required in the trials, and far more: it became the prototype for all subsequent conventional locomotive boilers.

After the L \& MR opened in 1830, Booth as Treasurer became in effect the general superintendent and was later General Manager. He invented screw couplings for use with sprung buffers. When the L \& MR was absorbed by the Grand Junction Railway in 1845 he became Secretary of the latter, and when, later the same year, that in turn amalgamated with the London \& Birmingham Railway (L \& BR) to form the London \& North Western Railway (L \& NWR), he became joint Secretary with Richard Creed from the L \& BR.

Earlier, completion in 1838 of the railway from London to Liverpool had brought problems with regard to local times. Towns then kept their own time according to their longitude: Birmingham time, for instance, was 7¼ minutes later than London time. This caused difficulties in railway operation, so Booth prepared a petition to Parliament on behalf of the L \& MR that London time should be used throughout the country, and in 1847 the L \& NWR, with other principal railways and the Post Office, adopted Greenwich time. It was only in 1880, however, that the arrangement was made law by Act of Parliament.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Mining and extraction technology

[br]

[br]

[br]

Educated at the Latin School at Penzance and from 1792 at Truro Grammar School, Davy was apprenticed to a surgeon in Penzance. In 1797 he began to teach himself chemistry by reading, among other works, Lavoisier's elementary treatise on chemistry. In 1798 Dr Thomas Beddoes of Bristol engaged him as assistant in setting up his Pneumatic Institution to pioneer the medical application of the newly discovered gases, especially oxygen.

In 1799 he discovered the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, discovered not long before by the chemist Joseph Priestley. He also noted its intoxicating qualities, on account of which it was dubbed "laughing-gas". Two years later Count Rumford, founder of the Royal Institution in 1800, appointed Davy Assistant Lecturer, and the following year Professor. His lecturing ability soon began to attract large audiences, making science both popular and fashionable.

Davy was stimulated by Volta's invention of the voltaic pile, or electric battery, to construct one for himself in 1800. That enabled him to embark on the researches into electrochemistry by which is chiefly known. In 1807 he tried decomposing caustic soda and caustic potash, hitherto regarded as elements, by electrolysis and obtained the metals sodium and potassium. He went on to discover the metals barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium by the same means. Next, he turned his attention to chlorine, which was then regarded as an oxide in accordance with Lavoisier's theory that oxygen was the essential component of acids; Davy failed to decompose it, however, even with the aid of electricity and concluded that it was an element, thus disproving Lavoisier's view of the nature of acids. In 1812 Davy published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he presented his chemical ideas without, however, committing himself to the atomic theory, recently advanced by John Dalton.

In 1813 Davy engaged Faraday as Assistant, perhaps his greatest service to science. In April 1815 Davy was asked to assist in the development of a miner's lamp which could be safely used in a firedamp (methane) laden atmosphere. The "Davy lamp", which emerged in January 1816, had its flame completely surrounded by a fine wire mesh; George Stephenson's lamp, based on a similar principle, had been introduced into the Northumberland pits several months earlier, and a bitter controversy as to priority of invention ensued, but it was Davy who was awarded the prize for inventing a successful safety lamp.

In 1824 Davy was the first to suggest the possibility of conferring cathodic protection to the copper bottoms of naval vessels by the use of sacrificial electrodes. Zinc and iron were found to be equally effective in inhibiting corrosion, although the scheme was later abandoned when it was found that ships protected in this way were rapidly fouled by weeds and barnacles.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

[br]

[br]

[br]

Trevithick's father was a tin-mine manager, and Trevithick himself, after limited formal education, developed his immense engineering talent among local mining machinery and steam-engines and found employment as a mining engineer. Tall, strong and high-spirited, he was the eternal optimist.

About 1797 it occurred to him that the separate condenser patent of James Watt could be avoided by employing "strong steam", that is steam at pressures substantially greater than atmospheric, to drive steam-engines: after use, steam could be exhausted to the atmosphere and the condenser eliminated. His first winding engine on this principle came into use in 1799, and subsequently such engines were widely used. To produce high-pressure steam, a stronger boiler was needed than the boilers then in use, in which the pressure vessel was mounted upon masonry above the fire: Trevithick designed the cylindrical boiler, with furnace tube within, from which the Cornish and later the Lancashire boilers evolved.

Simultaneously he realized that high-pressure steam enabled a compact steam-engine/boiler unit to be built: typically, the Trevithick engine comprised a cylindrical boiler with return firetube, and a cylinder recessed into the boiler. No beam intervened between connecting rod and crank. A master patent was taken out.

Such an engine was well suited to driving vehicles. Trevithick built his first steam-carriage in 1801, but after a few days' use it overturned on a rough Cornish road and was damaged beyond repair by fire. Nevertheless, it had been the first self-propelled vehicle successfully to carry passengers. His second steam-carriage was driven about the streets of London in 1803, even more successfully; however, it aroused no commercial interest. Meanwhile the Coalbrookdale Company had started to build a locomotive incorporating a Trevithick engine for its tramroads, though little is known of the outcome; however, Samuel Homfray's ironworks at Penydarren, South Wales, was already building engines to Trevithick's design, and in 1804 Trevithick built one there as a locomotive for the Penydarren Tramroad. In this, and in the London steam-carriage, exhaust steam was turned up the chimney to draw the fire. On 21 February the locomotive hauled five wagons with 10 tons of iron and seventy men for 9 miles (14 km): it was the first successful railway locomotive.

Again, there was no commercial interest, although Trevithick now had nearly fifty stationary engines completed or being built to his design under licence. He experimented with one to power a barge on the Severn and used one to power a dredger on the Thames. He became Engineer to a project to drive a tunnel beneath the Thames at Rotherhithe and was only narrowly defeated, by quicksands. Trevithick then set up, in 1808, a circular tramroad track in London and upon it demonstrated to the admission-fee-paying public the locomotive Catch me who can, built to his design by John Hazledine and J.U. Rastrick.

In 1809, by which date Trevithick had sold all his interest in the steam-engine patent, he and Robert Dickinson, in partnership, obtained a patent for iron tanks to hold liquid cargo in ships, replacing the wooden casks then used, and started to manufacture them. In 1810, however, he was taken seriously ill with typhus for six months and had to return to Cornwall, and early in 1811 the partners were bankrupt; Trevithick was discharged from bankruptcy only in 1814.

In the meantime he continued as a steam engineer and produced a single-acting steam engine in which the cut-off could be varied to work the engine expansively by way of a three-way cock actuated by a cam. Then, in 1813, Trevithick was approached by a representative of a company set up to drain the rich but flooded silver-mines at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, at an altitude of 14,000 ft (4,300 m). Low-pressure steam engines, dependent largely upon atmospheric pressure, would not work at such an altitude, but Trevithick's high-pressure engines would. Nine engines and much other mining plant were built by Hazledine and Rastrick and despatched to Peru in 1814, and Trevithick himself followed two years later. However, the war of independence was taking place in Peru, then a Spanish colony, and no sooner had Trevithick, after immense difficulties, put everything in order at the mines then rebels arrived and broke up the machinery, for they saw the mines as a source of supply for the Spanish forces. It was only after innumerable further adventures, during which he encountered and was assisted financially by Robert Stephenson, that Trevithick eventually arrived home in Cornwall in 1827, penniless.

He petitioned Parliament for a grant in recognition of his improvements to steam-engines and boilers, without success. He was as inventive as ever though: he proposed a hydraulic power transmission system; he was consulted over steam engines for land drainage in Holland; and he suggested a 1,000 ft (305 m) high tower of gilded cast iron to commemorate the Reform Act of 1832. While working on steam propulsion of ships in 1833, he caught pneumonia, from which he died.

[br]

See also: Blenkinsop, John

SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Land transport, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Ports and shipping, Public utilities, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

The son of Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia Kingdom, he was educated at a private boarding-school in Hove. At the age of 14 he went to the College of Caen and then to the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris, after which he was apprenticed to Louis Breguet. In 1822 he returned from France and started working in his father's office, while spending much of his time at the works of Maudslay, Sons \& Field.

From 1825 to 1828 he worked under his father on the construction of the latter's Thames Tunnel, occupying the position of Engineer-in-Charge, exhibiting great courage and presence of mind in the emergencies which occurred not infrequently. These culminated in January 1828 in the flooding of the tunnel and work was suspended for seven years. For the next five years the young engineer made abortive attempts to find a suitable outlet for his talents, but to little avail. Eventually, in 1831, his design for a suspension bridge over the River Avon at Clifton Gorge was accepted and he was appointed Engineer. (The bridge was eventually finished five years after Brunel's death, as a memorial to him, the delay being due to inadequate financing.) He next planned and supervised improvements to the Bristol docks. In March 1833 he was appointed Engineer of the Bristol Railway, later called the Great Western Railway. He immediately started to survey the route between London and Bristol that was completed by late August that year. On 5 July 1836 he married Mary Horsley and settled into 18 Duke Street, Westminster, London, where he also had his office. Work on the Bristol Railway started in 1836. The foundation stone of the Clifton Suspension Bridge was laid the same year. Whereas George Stephenson had based his standard railway gauge as 4 ft 8½ in (1.44 m), that or a similar gauge being usual for colliery wagonways in the Newcastle area, Brunel adopted the broader gauge of 7 ft (2.13 m). The first stretch of the line, from Paddington to Maidenhead, was opened to traffic on 4 June 1838, and the whole line from London to Bristol was opened in June 1841. The continuation of the line through to Exeter was completed and opened on 1 May 1844. The normal time for the 194-mile (312 km) run from Paddington to Exeter was 5 hours, at an average speed of 38.8 mph (62.4 km/h) including stops. The Great Western line included the Box Tunnel, the longest tunnel to that date at nearly two miles (3.2 km).

Brunel was the engineer of most of the railways in the West Country, in South Wales and much of Southern Ireland. As railway networks developed, the frequent break of gauge became more of a problem and on 9 July 1845 a Royal Commission was appointed to look into it. In spite of comparative tests, run between Paddington-Didcot and Darlington-York, which showed in favour of Brunel's arrangement, the enquiry ruled in favour of the narrow gauge, 274 miles (441 km) of the former having been built against 1,901 miles (3,059 km) of the latter to that date. The Gauge Act of 1846 forbade the building of any further railways in Britain to any gauge other than 4 ft 8 1/2 in (1.44 m).

The existence of long and severe gradients on the South Devon Railway led to Brunel's adoption of the atmospheric railway developed by Samuel Clegg and later by the Samuda brothers. In this a pipe of 9 in. (23 cm) or more in diameter was laid between the rails, along the top of which ran a continuous hinged flap of leather backed with iron. At intervals of about 3 miles (4.8 km) were pumping stations to exhaust the pipe. Much trouble was experienced with the flap valve and its lubrication—freezing of the leather in winter, the lubricant being sucked into the pipe or eaten by rats at other times—and the experiment was abandoned at considerable cost.

Brunel is to be remembered for his two great West Country tubular bridges, the Chepstow and the Tamar Bridge at Saltash, with the latter opened in May 1859, having two main spans of 465 ft (142 m) and a central pier extending 80 ft (24 m) below high water mark and allowing 100 ft (30 m) of headroom above the same. His timber viaducts throughout Devon and Cornwall became a feature of the landscape. The line was extended ultimately to Penzance.

As early as 1835 Brunel had the idea of extending the line westwards across the Atlantic from Bristol to New York by means of a steamship. In 1836 building commenced and the hull left Bristol in July 1837 for fitting out at Wapping. On 31 March 1838 the ship left again for Bristol but the boiler lagging caught fire and Brunel was injured in the subsequent confusion. On 8 April the ship set sail for New York (under steam), its rival, the 703-ton Sirius, having left four days earlier. The 1,340-ton Great Western arrived only a few hours after the Sirius. The hull was of wood, and was copper-sheathed. In 1838 Brunel planned a larger ship, some 3,000 tons, the Great Britain, which was to have an iron hull.

The Great Britain was screwdriven and was launched on 19 July 1843,289 ft (88 m) long by 51 ft (15.5 m) at its widest. The ship's first voyage, from Liverpool to New York, began on 26 August 1845. In 1846 it ran aground in Dundrum Bay, County Down, and was later sold for use on the Australian run, on which it sailed no fewer than thirty-two times in twenty-three years, also serving as a troop-ship in the Crimean War. During this war, Brunel designed a 1,000-bed hospital which was shipped out to Renkioi ready for assembly and complete with shower-baths and vapour-baths with printed instructions on how to use them, beds and bedding and water closets with a supply of toilet paper! Brunel's last, largest and most extravagantly conceived ship was the Great Leviathan, eventually named The Great Eastern, which had a double-skinned iron hull, together with both paddles and screw propeller. Brunel designed the ship to carry sufficient coal for the round trip to Australia without refuelling, thus saving the need for and the cost of bunkering, as there were then few bunkering ports throughout the world. The ship's construction was started by John Scott Russell in his yard at Millwall on the Thames, but the building was completed by Brunel due to Russell's bankruptcy in 1856. The hull of the huge vessel was laid down so as to be launched sideways into the river and then to be floated on the tide. Brunel's plan for hydraulic launching gear had been turned down by the directors on the grounds of cost, an economy that proved false in the event. The sideways launch with over 4,000 tons of hydraulic power together with steam winches and floating tugs on the river took over two months, from 3 November 1857 until 13 January 1858. The ship was 680 ft (207 m) long, 83 ft (25 m) beam and 58 ft (18 m) deep; the screw was 24 ft (7.3 m) in diameter and paddles 60 ft (18.3 m) in diameter. Its displacement was 32,000 tons (32,500 tonnes).

The strain of overwork and the huge responsibilities that lay on Brunel began to tell. He was diagnosed as suffering from Bright's disease, or nephritis, and spent the winter travelling in the Mediterranean and Egypt, returning to England in May 1859. On 5 September he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed, and he died ten days later at his Duke Street home.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

England trained with John Penn \& Sons, marine engine and boilermakers, and set up his own business at Hatcham Iron Works, South London, in about 1840. This was initially a general engineering business and made traversing screw jacks, which England had patented, but by 1850 it was building locomotives. One of these, Little England, a 2–2– 2T light locomotive owing much to the ideas of W.Bridges Adams, was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and England then prospered, supplying many railways at home and abroad with small locomotives. In 1863 he built two exceptionally small 0–4–0 tank locomotives for the Festiniog Railway, which enabled the latter's Manager and Engineer C.E. Spooner to introduce steam traction on this line with its gauge of just under 2 ft (60 cm). England's works had a reputation for good workmanship, suggesting he inspired loyalty among his employees, yet he also displayed increasingly tyrannical behaviour towards them: the culmination was a disastrous strike in 1865 that resulted in the loss of a substantial order from the South Eastern Railway. From 1866 George England became associated with development of locomotives to the patent of Robert Fairlie, but in 1869 he retired due to ill health and leased his works to a partnership of his son (also called George England), Robert Fairlie and J.S.Fraser under the title of the Fairlie Engine \& Steam Carriage Company. However, George England junior died within a few months, locomotive production ceased in 1870 and the works was sold off two years later.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Gregory's father was Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.C.H. Gregory himself, after working for Robert Stephenson, was appointed Engineer to the London \& Croydon Railway in 1839. On it, at New Cross in 1841, he installed a semaphore signal derived from signalling apparatus used by the Royal Navy; two hinged semaphore arms projected either side from the top of a post, signalling to drivers of trains in each direction of travel. In horizontal position each arm signified "danger", an arm inclined at 45° meant "caution" and the vertical position, in which the arms disappeared within a slot in the post, meant "all right". Gregory's signal was the forerunner of semaphore signals adopted on railways worldwide. In 1843 Gregory invented the stirrup frame: signal arms were connected to stirrups that were pushed down by the signalman's foot in order to operate them, while the points were operated by levers. The stirrups were connected together to prevent conflicting signals from being shown. This was a predecessor of interlocking. In 1846 Gregory became Engineer to the Bristol \& Exeter Railway, where in 1848 he co-operated with W.B. Adams in the development and operation of the first self-propelled railcar. He later did civil engineering work in Italy and France, was Engineer to the Somerset Central and Dorset Central railways and became Consulting Engineer for the government railways in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Cape of Good Hope, Straits Settlements and Trinidad.

[br]

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

The Wylam wagonway passed Newburn, and Hedley, who went to school at Wylam, must have been familiar with this wagonway from childhood. It had been built c.1748 to carry coal from Wylam Colliery to the navigable limit of the Tyne at Lemington. In 1805 Hedley was appointed viewer, or manager, of Wylam Colliery by Christopher Blackett, who had inherited the colliery and wagonway in 1800. Unlike most Tyneside wagonways, the gradient of the Wylam line was insufficient for loaded wagons to run down by gravity and they had to be hauled by horses. Blackett had a locomotive, of the type designed by Richard Trevithick, built at Gateshead as early as 1804 but did not take delivery, probably because his wooden track was not strong enough. In 1808 Blackett and Hedley relaid the wagonway with plate rails of the type promoted by Benjamin Outram, and in 1812, following successful introduction of locomotives at Middleton by John Blenkinsop, Blackett asked Hedley to investigate the feasibility of locomotives at Wylam. The expense of re-laying with rack rails was unwelcome, and Hedley experimented to find out the relationship between the weight of a locomotive and the load it could move relying on its adhesion weight alone. He used first a model test carriage, which survives at the Science Museum, London, and then used a full-sized test carriage laden with weights in varying quantities and propelled by men turning handles. Having apparently satisfied himself on this point, he had a locomotive incorporating the frames and wheels of the test carriage built. The work was done at Wylam by Thomas Waters, who was familiar with the 1804 locomotive, Timothy Hackworth, foreman smith, and Jonathan Forster, enginewright. This locomotive, with cast-iron boiler and single cylinder, was unsatisfactory: Hackworth and Forster then built another locomotive to Hedley's design, with a wrought-iron return-tube boiler, two vertical external cylinders and drive via overhead beams through pinions to the two axles. This locomotive probably came into use in the spring of 1814: it performed well and further examples of the type were built. Their axle loading, however, was too great for the track and from about 1815 each locomotive was mounted on two four-wheeled bogies, the bogie having recently been invented by William Chapman. Hedley eventually left Wylam in 1827 to devote himself to other colliery interests. He supported the construction of the Clarence Railway, opened in 1833, and sent his coal over it in trains hauled by his own locomotives. Two of his Wylam locomotives survive— Puffing Billy at the Science Museum, London, and Wylam Dilly at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh—though how much of these is original and how much dates from the period 1827–32, when the Wylam line was re-laid with edge rails and the locomotives reverted to four wheels (with flanges), is a matter of mild controversy.

[br]

See also: Stephenson, George

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

After being educated at Sheffield Grammar School, Thompson and his elder brother established Aberdare Iron Works, South Wales, where he gained experience in mine engineering from the coal-and ironstone-mines with which the works were connected. In 1811 he moved to the North of England as Managing Partner in Bewicke's Main Colliery, County Durham, which was replaced in 1814 by a new colliery at nearby Ouston. Coal from this was carried to the Tyne over the Pelew Main Wagonway, which included a 1,992 yd (1,821 m) section where horses had to haul loaded wagons between the top of one cable-worked incline and the foot of the next. Both inclines were worked by stationary steam engines, and by installing a rope with a record length of nearly 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km), in 1821 Thompson arranged for the engine of the upper incline to haul the loaded wagons along the intervening section also. To their rear was attached the rope from the engine of the lower incline, to be used in due course to haul the empties back again.

He subsequently installed this system of "reciprocal working" elsewhere, in particular in 1826 over five miles (8 km) of the Brunton \& Shields Railroad, a colliery line north of the Tyne, where trains were hauled at an average speed of 6 mph (10 km/h) including rope changes. This performance was better than that of contemporary locomotives. The directors of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway, which was then being built, considered installing reciprocal cable haulage on their line, and then decided to stage a competition to establish whether an improved steam locomotive could do better still. This competition became the Rainhill Trials of 1829 and was decisively won by Rocket, which had been built for the purpose.

Thompson meanwhile had become prominent in the promotion of the Newcastle \& Carlisle Railway, which, when it received its Act in 1829, was the longest railway so far authorized in Britain.

[br]

See also: Rastrick, John Urpeth; Stephenson, Robert

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

[br]

[br]

[br]

Worsdell \& Son, Coachbuilders, was set up in Liverpool by Thomas Clarke Worsdell and his son Nathaniel in 1827. They were introduced to George Stephenson and built the tender for Rocket. More importantly, they designed and built for the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway coaches of a type comprising three coach bodies, of contemporary road-coach pattern, mounted together on a rail-wagon underframe. This became the prototype for the conventional, compartment railway coach. Nathaniel Worsdell subsequently became Carriage Superintendent of the Grand Junction Railway and patented the first mail-bag-exchange apparatus early in 1838. The terms he required for its use by the Post Office were too steep, however, and the first bagexchange apparatus of the type subsequently used extensively on British railways was designed later the same year by John Ramsey, a senior Post Office clerk.

[br]