FRUSTRATIONS OF FUEL EFFICIENCY: FEED-WATER HEATERS PART TWO

THE WORK OF F. H.TREVITHICK

Frederick Henry Trevithick was the son of Francis Trevithick (Locomotive Superintendent of the Northern Division of the London & North Western Railway until 1857) and grandson of the ‘giant of steam’ Richard Trevithick, and he was the first locomotive engineer to carry out methodical experiments and trials to test different designs of feed-water heater. He had been appointed as chief mechanical engineer of the Egyptian State Railways in 1883, his first few years being devoted to rationalising and modernising the chaotic condition of the locomotive stock. Having achieved this objective, he turned his attention to incorporating improvements of his own invention in areas of feed-water heating and superheating. The level nature of the track and the invariable weather conditions in Egypt meant that each modification could then be tested directly against unmodified locomotives of the same class. Ernest Ahrons, best known for his classic book on and his six volumes on had worked with Trevithick in Egypt for six years in the 1890s. He wrote a series of articles for the between June 1913 and January 1914 which went into great detail