Timothy Hackworth

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Timothy Hackworth

Timothy Hackworth (born December 22, 1786 in Wylam near Newcastle upon Tyne , † July 7, 1850 in Shildon ) made a name for himself as one of the first builders of steam locomotives and as the owner of a locomotive factory. His main merit lies in the fact that he established the steam locomotive as a reliable machine from 1826 as superintendent of the machines of the Stockton and Darlington Railway .

Hackworth early years

Hackworth learned from 1802 to 1807 in the coal mine of Wylam the profession of a blacksmith . Just a year later, he became the foreman of the smithy (foreman blacksmith) of the colliery as the successor to his father. The owner of the mine, Christopher Blackett , had already commissioned a steam locomotive based on Richard Trevithick's patent in Gateshead near Newcastle in 1805 , but after its completion refused to buy it because it was too heavy for the rails of his mine railway. After Blackett had the railway's rails reinforced in 1808, he ordered another machine from Trevithick in 1809, but Trevithick refused the order. When Blackett became aware of the success of the "traveling engine" of John Blenkinsop and Mathew Murray in Leeds in 1811 , Blackett instructed his viewer (pit manager) in Wylam, William Hedley , to build a similar machine. With the help of Hackworth and the wagon builder Jonathan Forster (Foster) as the most important helpers, Hedley built several locomotives for the mine railway in Wylam near Newcastle between 1812 and 1815, including the locomotive "Puffing Billy" built in 1813, which is now in the Science Museum in Kensington , London , as well as the “Wylam Dilly”, which is in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.

Hackworth as a recognized railroad pioneer

The locomotive "The Royal George" of the Stockton and Darlington Railway built by Timothy Hackworth in 1827
Replica of the "Sans Pareil" at the special exhibition "Adler, Rocket and Co." in the Nuremberg Transport Museum

At his own request, Hackworth left Wylam in 1816 and then worked as a foreman blacksmith at the nearby Walbottle colliery until 1824 . According to his descendants, Hackworth took over the management of the Robert Stephenson and Company machine factory in Newcastle, which was still under construction at the time, in the late summer or autumn of 1824 . In this role he played a key role in the design of the locomotives for the Stockton and Darlington Railway , which was then under construction . However, this claim cannot be proven in the company's books. Presumably Hackworth was only employed as a foreman smith at R. Stephenson and Co. in the fall of 1824 . On the recommendation of George Stephenson , who at the time was the chief engineer in charge of the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, Hackworth was appointed superintendent of the machines of this railway company in May 1825. In this role, Hackworth initially oversaw the construction of the stationary steam engines supplied by R. Stephenson and Co. for the operation of the two funiculars at Brusselton and Etherley and later the operation of the locomotives on the approximately 20 mile long railway line between Shildon and the port of Stockton. To maintain the locomotives, the railway company built its own workshop at Shildon, north of Darlington, as well as houses for the superintendent and 20 workers.

Although in the first few years, the operation of the railway was still mainly carried out with horses, Hackworth was able to gain experience as operations manager with the existing steam locomotives and analyze their weak points. In particular, the locomotive delivered by Robert Wilson & Company in Newcastle in 1826 proved to be inefficient. When this machine was damaged in a collision, Hackworth received permission from the directors in late 1826 to convert and improve it based on his previous experience. The result of the conversion was the “Royal George” locomotive, which was put into operation in November 1827. This was also the first locomotive that Timothy Hackworth designed. John Stephenson, the brother of George Stephenson, called it "the best machine in the world" at the time. It can be seen as a credit to Hackworth that the Stockton and Darlington Railway had nine operational machines when they decided in late 1830 to switch operations on the line entirely to locomotives.

With the permission of his employers, Hackworth took part in the tender for locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1829, for which purpose this railway company had the famous test drives ("races") carried out by Rainhill near Liverpool. The two-axle locomotive "Sans Pareil", built by Hackworth in the Shildon Railway Workshop at his own expense, could not complete the 60-mile test drive required for the competition (which was a return trip between Liverpool and Manchester) because the water pump that operated the Supplied the boiler with fresh water, failed to work several times. Hackworth had to break off the trip because of the lack of water. The locomotive was later bought by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway anyway. It is still preserved today and is in "The National Railway Museum" in Shildon.

The Hackworth and Downing locomotive works in Shildon

The management of the Stockton & Darlington Railway decided in 1833 to take over the operation of the railway itself (until then any entrepreneur who owned the appropriate wagons could use the tracks of the railway for a certain fee). As a result of the reorganization, the employment contract with Timothy Hackworth was changed so that he would take over the maintenance of the company's machines as an independent contractor. For this purpose, Hackworth founded shortly afterwards together with Nicholas Downing the company "Hackworth and Downing", Soho Works, New Shildon, which serviced the locomotives of the Stockton and Darlington Railway until 1840. From 1836 the company Hackworth and Downing, whose building Hackworth had built right next to the operating workshop of the railway company, also supplied locomotives to other railway companies. In the year it was founded, Hackworth delivered one of the first three locomotives to be delivered from England to Russia. The locomotives were intended for the St. Petersburg & Tsarskoe Selo Railway . A year later, in 1837, Hackworth delivered the " Samson " for the Albion Mines Railway in Nova Scotia. This machine was the first locomotive to go into service in Canada (it is now restored in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia).

The Hackworth company (until 1840 under the name Hackworth & Downing) built around 40 to 50 locomotives by 1850. The last locomotive built by Timothy Hackworth was a three-axle machine based on the model of David Joy's "Jenny Lind", type 1A1, which was again called "Sans Pareil" and already had a partially welded boiler and frame. The machine initially ran for some time in 1849 on the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) and was then (from 1851 to 1881) owned by the York, Newcastle & Berwick Railway (since 1854: North Eastern Railway).

The former Shildon train station houses the "THE TIMOTHY HACKWORTH VICTORIAN & RAILWAY MUSEUM". The museum has been an external division of The National Railway Museum in York for several years.

Hackworth and the invention of the steam locomotive

After Timothy Hackworth's death, his eldest son, John Wesley Hackworth, who himself was a trained engineer, wrote several papers between 1855 and 1892, in which he tried to prove that his father was the actual "father of the steam locomotive". Robert Young, a grandson of Timothy Hackworth, reaffirmed this thesis in an extensive biography which appeared in 1923, whereby this assertion e.g. Some also found their way into the railway specialist literature. A few years ago (in 2005) Jane Young-Hackworth, a great-great-granddaughter of Timothy Hackworth, presented a letter from George Stephenson to the National Railway Museum, with which she once again tried to prove that Timothy Hackworth was the so-called " Blowpipe " invented. Since the descendants of T. Hackworth concentrate almost exclusively on comparisons with George Stephenson and William Hedley in their writings, they mostly ignore the fact that many of the inventions which they attribute to their ancestors were already used by Richard Trevithick in his mobile steam engines are. This includes u. a. also the "blowpipe" as part of the induced draft system. In addition, the “list of inventions” that John Wesley Hackworth ascribes to his father includes several technical innovations that undoubtedly go back to other railway pioneers such as Matthew Murray, William Chapman or John Buddle.

The most important invention, which is undisputedly attributed to Timothy Hackworth, is the safety valve loaded with a steel spring. After the boilers of two locomotives exploded in quick succession in 1828, killing the train drivers, Hackworth found in the subsequent investigations that the locomotive personnel had often tied the weight-loaded safety valves with cords on the way to increase the steam pressure and thus the performance of the machines to increase. He then constructed a safety valve loaded with steel springs, which was designed in such a way that it could no longer be manipulated by the staff.

Quote

Hackworth has a secure place in railroad history as the first to establish the steam locomotive as a reliable machine.

("Hackworth has an assured place in railway history as the first to establish the steam locomotive as a thoroughly reliable machine")

John Marshall, author of "Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers"

literature

  • EL Ahrons, The British Steam Locomotive 1825–1925, London 1927 (reprinted by Newton Abbot, 1966)
  • CF Dendy Marshall, A History of Railway Locomotives down to the End of the Year 1831, London, 1930 (reprinted London, 1953)
  • JW Hackworth, A chapter in the History of Railway Locomotion, and Memoir of Timothy Hackworth ("The Father of Locomotives"), with Portrait and a List of some of his Principal Inventions, London, 1892
  • John Marshall, Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, Railway & Canal Historical Society, 2000, ISBN 0-901461-50-4
  • WW Tomlinson, The North Eastern Railway. Its Rise and Development, Newcastle 1914 (reprinted by Newton Abbot 1987)
  • JGH Warren, A Century of Locomotive Building by Robert Stephenson & Co. 1823–1923, London, 1923 (reprinted 1970)
  • R. Young, Timothy Hackworth and the Steam Locomotive, London, 1923 (Lewes reprinted, 2000)

Web links

Commons : Timothy Hackworth  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Evidence and Notes

  1. ↑ Biographical data mainly based on R. Young, Timothy Hackworth and the Steam Locomotive (1923 - reprint 2000)
  2. ↑ The apprenticeship at that time in England usually lasted from the end of school time to the beginning of the age of 21 years.
  3. ↑ in the literature you can find both the spelling “Foster” and “Forster”; after CF Dendy Marshall "Forster" was born in 1775 in the South Tyne Valley and he died in 1860 in Wylam.
  4. ↑ In 1816 three machines were in operation on the mine railway in Wylam (Andy Guy, "North Eastern Locomotive Pioniers 1805 to 1827", in Early Railways, London, 2001)
  5. ↑ CF Dendy Marshall, A History of Railway Locomotives down to the End of the Year 1831, 1930 (reprinted in London 1953)
  6. ↑ because he was repeatedly obliged to work on Sundays there, which he refused for religious reasons (National Railway Museum, Hackworth Family Archive)
  7. ^ R. Young, Timothy Hackworth and the Steam Locomotive, London, 1923 (reprinted by Lewes, 2000)
  8. ↑ So foreman of the forge
  9. ↑ CF Dendy Marshall, A History of Railway Locomotives down to the End of the Year 1831, 1930 (reprinted in London 1953), JGH Warren, A Century of Locomotive Building 1823–1923, 1923 (reprinted by Newton Abbot 1970)
  10. ^ WW Tomlinson, The North Eastern Railway, 1914 (reprinted by Newton Abbot 1987)
  11. ^ MW Kirby, The Origins of Railway Enterprise. The Stockton and Darlington Railway 1821-1863, Cambridge, 2002
  12. ↑ CF Dendy Marshall, A History of Railway Locomotives down to the End of the Year 1831, 1930 (reprinted in London 1953)
  13. ^ RGH Thomas, The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, London, 1980
  14. ↑ Later it was repeatedly claimed that "Sans Pareil" failed because one of the cylinders "exploded" or at least suddenly lost a lot of steam. However, such an incident is not mentioned in contemporary reports that covered the competition in detail.
  15. ↑ http://www.nrm.org.uk/PlanaVisit/VisitShildon.aspx
  16. ^ MW Kirby, The Origins of Railway Enterprise. The Stockton and Darlington Railway 1821-1863, Cambridge, 2002
  17. ^ R. Young, Timothy Hackworth and the steam locomotive (1923) (Reprinted by Lewes, 2000)
  18. ^ The Railway Magazine, Vol. IX new series, 1838, 369
  19. ↑ http://museumofindustry.novascotia.ca/collections-research/locomotives/samson/timeline-samson "
  20. ↑ not to be confused with Fossick and Hackworth in Stockton; this company was founded in 1840 by Thomas Hackworth, Timothy's brother, who built locomotives until 1856: AL Ahrons, The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825–1925, London, 1927 (reprinted by Newton Abbot, 1966)
  21. ↑ James W. Lowe, British Steam Locomotive Builders, London, 1975
  22. ^ Ahrons, The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825–1925, London, 1927 (reprinted by Newton Abbot, 1966)
  23. ^ John S. MacLean, The Locomotives of the North Eastern Railway 1841-1922, Newcastle, 1923
  24. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from July 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.railcentre.co.uk
  25. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nrm.org.uk
  26. ^ JW Hackworth, A chapter in the History of Railway Locomotion, and Memoir of Timothy Hackworth ("The father of locomotives,") with portrait and a List of some of his Principal Inventions, London, 1892 (anthology with several previously published articles )
  27. ^ Robert Young, Timothy Hackworth and the Steam Locomotive, London, 1923; also the same: Timothy Hackworth and the Locomotive. Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 1921, 2, 70-87
  28. ↑ http://www.culture24.org.uk/places+to+go/north+west/manchester/art29660 (article from August 2, 2005); "Culture24" is a government organization that promotes British museums.
  29. ↑ in detail on this WA Tuplin, in “Introduction” to: JGH Warren, A Century of Locomotive Building 1823–1923, 1923 (reprinted 1970); also: WT Jackman, The Development of Transportation in Modern England, Vol. 2: Development of Railways, Cambridge, 1916, and CF Dendy Marshall, A History of Railway Locomotives down to the End of the Year 1831, 1930 (reprinted in London 1953) and Stuart Owen Jones, The Penydarren Locomotive, Cardiff, 1981
  30. ↑ of the approximately fifty steam locomotives built in Great Britain up to 1828, about 90% had a "blowpipe" (cf. CF Dendy Marshall, A History of Railway Locomotives down to the End of the Year 1831, 1930 (reprinted in London 1953 ), as well as the articles in Early Railways, Vol. 1 - 4, Papers from the International Railway Conferences held in London, Transactions Newcomen Society, 2000–2009).
  31. ↑ However, as early as 1812 the locomotives of John Blenkinsop and Mathew Murray also had an automatic safety valve that was closed by a steel coil spring
  32. ↑ cf. boiler explosion at Aycliffe Lane on July 1, 1828; RH Inness, Locomotive history of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, 1825–1876 (in Loco. Rly. Carr. Revue, 1925, 31, 42ff.)
  33. ^ WW Tomlinson, The North Eastern Railway, 1914 (reprinted by Newton Abbot 1987)
personal data
SURNAME Hackworth, Timothy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION a trained blacksmith and later mechanical engineer, who mainly steam locomotives built
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1786
PLACE OF BIRTH Wylam near Newcastle upon Tyne
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1850
Place of death Shildon