GREAT STEAM ENGINEERS OF THE PRE-GROUPING PERIOD PART TEN: 1910-1918

On the Great Western Railway, George Jackson Churchward had taken over from William Dean at Swindon in 1902 and from 1915 his post on the GWR was renamed that of chief mechanical engineer.

He was probably the most influential British steam locomotive designer ever and in the course of his career, he remodelled Swindon works and built the new boiler-erecting shops and the first static locomotive-testing plant in the UK.

Churchward’s design philosophy followed a number of streams of development, for which he thoroughly researched competing UK designs, as well as European and North American locomotives.

Although Churchward experimented with compounding, he considered that it was of little advantage. His experiments instead led him to use higher pressure boilers and split the drive between two axles on his four cylinder designs.

Churchward was an early advocate of superheating, made efficient through the GWR’s exclusive use of the high calorific-value steam coal from the South Wales coalfield. He also adopted large bearing surfaces to reduce wear, something that was common in North America.

Piston valves were in their infancy at the time of Churchward’s appointment but his valves were 50% larger than anything seen in the UK to that time, they travelled 50% further and they were designed to be concealed. The result gave the minimum loss of pressure as steam passed to the cylinders.

By 1910, Churchward followed his City 4-4-0 with the 2800 2-8-0; the two-cylinder Saint 4-6-0 and four-cylinder Star 4-6-0; the 4400 and 4500 class 2-6-2 Prairie tanks; and Britain’s first Pacific, The Great Bear.

In 1910 he introduced the 4200 class of 2-8-0T and, in 1911, the 4300 class 2-6-0, but further new designs would have to wait until after the war.

North of the border

Fredrick George Smith was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1872. He was appointed manager of the Highland Railway’s Lochgorm works in 1903, and promoted to assistant to the chief mechanical engineer, Peter Drummond the same year.

After Drummond’s departure for the Glasgow and South Western Railway in 1911, Smith was appointed to replace him, under the old title of locomotive carriage and wagon superintendent.

His only design for the Highland Railway (HR) was the River class 4-6-0, which was rejected by the chief engineer, leading to Smith’s resignation. He went on to take a post in the Ministry of Munitions and in 1918 he entered the steel industry.

The Rivers were the largest and most powerful locomotives built for the HR. Smith knew they were over the axle load limit but he had designed them to cause much