The Spooners of Porthmadog
The Spooners of Porthmadog refers to the Spooner family of Porthmadog, North Wales who made important contributions to the development of narrow gauge railways both locally and throughout the world. James Spooner, together with his sons James Swinton and Charles Easton and other members of their family and managed the Ffestiniog Railway for over fifty years. In North Wales they were involved in the promotion of numerous railway schemes including many quarry lines, the Talyllyn Railway, the Festiniog and Blaenau Railway, the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways and the Carnarvonshire Railway. Through publications and overseas family commissions they influenced narrow gauge railway construction in Russia and throughout the British Empire. Dates 1790–1856 James Spooner was born at Leigh near Worcester in 1790, he trained as a land surveyor and is believed to have worked as a civilian member of an Ordnance Survey team, he married in 1813 and his first three children were Matthew, James Swinton, Caroline.
From 1818 to 1824, they lived at Maentwrog where Charles Easton, Louisa and Amelia were born. When the North Wales survey was completed in 1823, with his growing family and worked as a freelance surveyor. In 1825, Spooner took a lease of Wm. Madocks house Tanyrallt Isa at Tremadog where Elizabeth and Harriet were born and Caroline was accidentally shot dead by Matthew; the family moved to Morfa Lodge in Porthmadog where William was born in 1834. Spooner was well established as a local surveyor and he had surveyed inclines and a tramway from the Moelwyns to Porthmadog via the Croesor valley, when, in 1830, Henry Archer commissioned him to survey a suitable route for the Ffestiniog Railway. James Swinton and Charles Easton both assisted their father in this work. Spooner had an experienced assistant in Thomas Prichard who had worked for Stephenson; the survey completed, Robert Stephenson walked the route with Archer and his sons and Prichard. Stephenson gave his full approval to their plans. There has been much discussion concerning the Robert Stephenson involvement.
The elder Robert Stephenson, the younger brother of George Stephenson and laid out the route of the Nantlle Tramway c.1825 and in recent years, it has been thought that he was the inspector of the Ffestiniog route. However, Dr. M. J. T. Lewis argues convincingly that it was indeed George Stephenson’s distinguished son Robert who advised the Ffestiniog promoters. Spooner introduced to the Ffestiniog Railway, from the start, the ‘horse dandy’, that peculiar practice whereby the horse, having fought against gravity for twelve long miles hauling empty slate wagons from bottom to top in four or five hours, was rewarded with a bag of oats and a high speed ride from top to bottom behind eighty loaded slate wagons and propelled by ‘that same gravity against which he had for so long toiled upwards’ – as a contemporary report put it; the engineered downhill route with a continuous grade of about 1 in 80 for twelve miles was designed for gravity operation and resulted in gravity and horse operation being successful and economical but slow.
The line was soon operating to maximum capacity. As built the line was a pioneering model appealing to many seeking to solve the problems of moving heavy loads down hill. Dates 1818–1889 As a boy, with his eldest brother James he had assisted his father in laying out the Ffestiniog Railway and subsequently during construction, he appears to have remained in Porthmadog and been involved with the railway under his father, Clerk to the company. Charles became Treasurer of the company in 1848 and following his father's death in 1856 was appointed Manager and Clerk, he held the position for thirty years and dominated Ffestiniog Railway management and engineering until his own health began to fail in 1887. Under Charles the blacksmiths' forge at Boston Lodge was developed into comprehensive railway manufacturing and repair workshops. Spooner was faced with the intractable problem of a railway working to maximum capacity yet unable to cope with the volume of traffic on offer, he was aware that others were seeking alternative routes for the transport of Blaenau Ffestiniog's growing slate traffic.
Spooner investigated the option of conversion to double track but the added capacity could not have paid for the construction costs involved. Steam locomotives, never before tried on a narrow gauge line and declared by all the leading designers to be unworkable on so narrow a gauge, were inevitable, but they would not have been possible when the line was built in 1836 and could only be introduced 27 years when locomotive development had advanced and after the line had been relaid with heavier steel rails. Charles Easton Spooner engaged Charles Holland to design the first six small engines built by George England and Co. for the Ffestiniog. The first four engines delivered in 1863 required significant modification by the Spooners in the light of experience; this was, the first successful application of steam traction on a narrow gauge railway. That two of the original four locomotives are still in regular operational use 140 years after construction is an enormous tribute to the soundness of the design.
Engines were delivered on the newly opened Cambrian Railways to Minffordd where Spooner had laid out a pattern of exchange sidings that inspired many visitors from abroad to adopt narrow gauge as the inexpensive feeder line to the standard gauge. It was through George England that Spooner co
Tank locomotive
A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender. A tank engine may have a bunker to hold fuel. There are several different types of tank locomotive, distinguished by the position and style of the water tanks and fuel bunkers; the most common type has tanks mounted either side of the boiler. This type originated about 1840 and became popular for industrial tasks, for shunting and shorter distance main line duties. Tank locomotives have disadvantages compared to traditional tender locomotives; the first tank locomotive was the Novelty that ran at the Rainhill Trials in 1829. It was an example of a Well Tank. However, the more common form of Side tank date from the 1840s. In spite of the early belief that such locomotives were inherently unsafe, the idea caught on for industrial use and five manufacturers exhibited designs at The Great Exhibition in 1851; these were E. B. Wilson and Company, William Fairbairn & Sons, George England, Kitson Thompson and Hewitson and William Bridges Adams.
By the mid-1850s tank locomotives were to be found performing a variety of main line and industrial roles those involving shorter journeys or frequent changes in direction. There are a number of types of tank locomotive, based on the style of the water tanks; these include the saddle tank, the pannier tank, the well tank and others. A configuration common in the U. K; the water is contained in rectangular tanks mounted on either side of the locomotive, near to the boiler but not quite touching. The tank sides extend down to the running platform, if such is present, for at least part of their length; the length of side tanks was limited in order to give access to the inside motion. If it was desired to extend them to the front of the locomotive for greater capacity, access could be facilitated by apertures provided at the appropriate location. With larger side tanks it was sometimes necessary to taper the tanks at the front end to improve forward visibility. Side tanks all stopped at, or before, the end of the boiler barrel, with the smokebox protruding ahead.
A few designs did reach to the front of the smokebox and these were termed'flatirons'. The water tank sits on top of the boiler; the tank is curved in cross-section, although in some cases there were straight sides surmounted by a curve, or an ogee shape. Saddle tanks were a popular arrangement for smaller locomotives in industrial use, it gave a greater water supply, but limited the size of the boiler and restricted access to it for cleaning. However, the locomotive hence must operate at lower speeds; the driver's vision may be restricted, again restricting the safe speed. Water in the tank is pre-heated by the boiler, which reduces the loss of pressure found when cold feedwater is injected into the boiler. However, if the water becomes too hot, injectors can fail. For this reason, the tanks stopped short of the hotter and uninsulated smokebox; the squared-off shape of the Belpaire firebox does not fit beneath a saddle tank, so most saddle tanks retained the older round-topped boiler instead. A few American locomotives used saddle tanks that only covered the boiler barrel, forward of the firebox.
Pannier tanks, in Britain used exclusively by the Great Western Railway, common in Belgium, are box-shaped tanks carried on the sides of the boiler like a pannier is carried by pack animal. Unlike the side tank, they do not go all the way down and there is space between the tank and the running plate; the pannier arrangement lowers the centre of gravity compared to a saddle tank, whilst still allowing easy access to the inside motion that the latter gave. The first Great Western pannier tanks were converted from saddle tank locomotives when these were being rebuilt in the early 1900s with the Belpaire firebox. There were difficulties in accommodating the flat top of the latter within an encircling saddle tank which cut down capacity and increased the tendency to overheat the water in the tank. In Belgium, pannier tanks were in use at least since 1866, once again in conjunction with Belpaire firebox locomotives built for the Belgian State and for la Société Générale d'Exploitatation, a private company grouping smaller secondary lines.
Pannier tank locomotives are seen as iconic of the GWR. In this design, used in earlier and smaller locomotives, the water is stored in a'well' on the underside of the locomotive between the locomotive's frames; this does not restrict access to the boiler, but space is limited there, the design is therefore not suitable for locomotives that need a good usable range before refilling. The arrangement does, have the advantage of creating a low centre of gravity, creating greater stability on poorly laid or narrow gauge tracks; the original tank locomotive, was a well tank. In this design, the tank is placed behind the cab over a supporting bogie; this removes the weight of the water from the driving wheels, giving the locomotive a constant tractive weight. The disadvantage is a reduction in water carrying capacity. A rear tank is an essential component of the American Forney type of loco, a 4-4-0 American-type with wheels reversed. Wing tanks are side tanks that run the length of the smokebox
Track gauge
In rail transport, track gauge or track gage is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails. All vehicles on a rail network must have running gear, compatible with the track gauge, in the earliest days of railways the selection of a proposed railway's gauge was a key issue; as the dominant parameter determining interoperability, it is still used as a descriptor of a route or network. In some places there is a distinction between the nominal gauge and the actual gauge, due to divergence of track components from the nominal. Railway engineers use a device, like a caliper, to measure the actual gauge, this device is referred to as a track gauge; the terms structure gauge and loading gauge, both used, have little connection with track gauge. Both refer to two-dimensional cross-section profiles, surrounding the track and vehicles running on it; the structure gauge specifies the outline into which altered structures must not encroach.
The loading gauge is the corresponding envelope within which rail vehicles and their loads must be contained. If an exceptional load or a new type of vehicle is being assessed to run, it is required to conform to the route's loading gauge. Conformance ensures. In the earliest days of railways, single wagons were manhandled on timber rails always in connection with mineral extraction, within a mine or quarry leading from it. Guidance was not at first provided except by human muscle power, but a number of methods of guiding the wagons were employed; the spacing between the rails had to be compatible with that of the wagon wheels. The timber rails wore rapidly. In some localities, the plates were made L-shaped, with the vertical part of the L guiding the wheels; as the guidance of the wagons was improved, short strings of wagons could be connected and pulled by horses, the track could be extended from the immediate vicinity of the mine or quarry to a navigable waterway. The wagons were built to a consistent pattern and the track would be made to suit the wagons: the gauge was more critical.
The Penydarren Tramroad of 1802 in South Wales, a plateway, spaced these at 4 ft 4 in over the outside of the upstands. The Penydarren Tramroad carried the first journey by a locomotive, in 1804, it was successful for the locomotive, but unsuccessful for the track: the plates were not strong enough to carry its weight. A considerable progressive step was made. Edge rails required a close match between rail spacing and the configuration of the wheelsets, the importance of the gauge was reinforced. Railways were still seen as local concerns: there was no appreciation of a future connection to other lines, selection of the track gauge was still a pragmatic decision based on local requirements and prejudices, determined by existing local designs of vehicles. Thus, the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway in the West of Scotland used 4 ft 6 in; the Arbroath and Forfar Railway opened in 1838 with a gauge of 5 ft 6 in, the Ulster Railway of 1839 used 6 ft 2 in Locomotives were being developed in the first decades of the 19th century.
His designs were so successful that they became the standard, when the Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened in 1825, it used his locomotives, with the same gauge as the Killingworth line, 4 ft 8 in. The Stockton and Darlington line was immensely successful, when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first intercity line, was built, it used the same gauge, it was hugely successful, the gauge, became the automatic choice: "standard gauge". The Liverpool and Manchester was followed by other trunk railways, with the Grand Junction Railway and the London and Birmingham Railway forming a huge critical mass of standard gauge; when Bristol promoters planned a line from London, they employed the innovative engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He decided on a wider gauge, to give greater stability, the Great Western Railway adopted a gauge of 7 ft eased to 7 ft 1⁄4 in; this became known as broad gauge. The Great Western Railway was successful and was expanded and through friendly associated companies, widening the scope of broad gauge.
At the same time, other parts of Britain built railways to standard gauge, British technology was exported to European countries and parts of North America using standard gauge. Britain polarised into two areas: those that used standard gauge. In this context, standard gauge was referred to as "narrow gauge" to indicate the contrast; some smaller concerns selected other non-standard gauges: the Eastern Counties Railway adopted 5 ft. Most of them converted to standard gauge at an early date, but the GWR's broad gauge continued to grow; the larger railway companies wished to expand geographically, large areas were considered to be under their control. When a new
Ffestiniog Railway
The Ffestiniog Railway is a 1 ft 11 1⁄2 in narrow-gauge heritage railway, located in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a major tourist attraction located within the Snowdonia National Park; the railway is 13 1⁄2 miles long and runs from the harbour at Porthmadog to the slate mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, travelling through forested and mountainous scenery. The line is single track throughout with four intermediate passing places; the first mile of the line out of Porthmadog runs atop an embankment locally called the Cob, the dyke of the Traeth Mawr "polder". The Festiniog Railway Company which owns the railway is the oldest surviving railway company in the world, it owns the Welsh Highland Railway, re-opened in 2011. The two railways share the same track gauge and meet at Porthmadog station, with occasional trains working the entire 40-mile route from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Caernarfon; the railway company is properly known as the "Festiniog Railway Company". The single F spelling is in the official title of the company in the Act.
It is the oldest surviving railway company in the world, having been founded by the Act of Parliament on 23 May 1832 with capital raised in Dublin by Henry Archer, the company's first secretary and managing director. Most British railways were amalgamated into four large groups in 1921 and into British Railways in 1948 but the Festiniog Railway Company, like most narrow-gauge railways, remained independent. In 1921, this was due to political influence, whereas in 1947 it was left out of British Railways because it was closed for traffic, despite vigorous local lobbying for it to be included. Various important developments in the Railway's early history were celebrated by the firing of rock cannon at various points along the line. Cannon were fired, for instance, to mark the laying of the first stone at Creuau in 1833, the railway's opening in 1836, the opening of the Moelwyn Tunnel in 1842; the passing of a Act for the railway saw cannon celebrations, but on this occasion a fitter at Boston Lodge, assisting with firing, lost the fingers of one hand in an accident.
The line was constructed between 1833 and 1836 to transport slate from the quarries around the inland town of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the coastal town of Porthmadog where it was loaded onto ships. The railway was graded so that loaded wagons could be run by gravity downhill all the way from Blaenau Ffestiniog to the port; the empty wagons were hauled back up by horses. To achieve this continuous grade, the line followed natural contours and employed cuttings and embankments built of stone and slate blocks without mortar. Prior to the completion in 1842 of a long tunnel through a spur in the Moelwyn Mountain, the slate trains were worked over the top via inclines, the site of which can still be seen although there are few visible remnants. Up to six trains daily were operated in each direction and a printed timetable was published on 16 September 1856 by Charles Easton Spooner who, following his father, served as Manager and Clerk for 30 years, it shows departures from the Quarry Terminus at 7:30, 9:28, 11:16, 1:14, 3:12 and 5:10.
Trains waited ten minutes at the intermediate stations called Tunnel Halt, Hafod y Llyn and Rhiw Goch. The fastest journey time from Quarry Terminus to Boston Lodge was 1 hour 32 minutes, including three stops. From Boston Lodge, the slate wagons were hauled to and from Porthmadog harbour by horses. Up trains took nearly six hours from Boston Lodge to the Quarry Terminus and each train ran in up to four sections, each hauled by a horse and comprising eight empty slate wagons plus a horse dandy; this timetable gave a maximum annual capacity of 70,000 tons of dressed slate. Two brakesmen travelled on each down train, controlling the speed by the application of brakes as needed. At passing loops, trains passed on the right and this continues to be a feature of Ffestiniog Railway operation. There is evidence for tourist passengers being carried as early as 1850 without the blessing of the Board of Trade, but these journeys would observe the timetable. Hafod y Llyn was replaced by Tan y Bwlch around 1872.
Dinas Station and much of that branch is now all but buried under slate waste. Occasional confusion arises because places named Hafod y Llyn Isaf and Dinas exist on the Welsh Highland Railway, albeit 10 miles or more to the northwest of those on the FR; the railway employed just one police officer. Board of Trade returns for 1884 show. In more recent times the British Transport Police made friendly overtures and were politely informed that the FR had powers to swear its own constables. During the late 1850s it became clear that the line was reaching its operational capacity, while the output of the Blaenau Ffestiniog slate quarries continued to rise. In 1860, the board of the company began to investigate the possibility of introducing steam locomotives to increase the carrying capacity of the railway. Although narrow-gauge steam locomotives had been tried before this few had been built to so narrow a gauge. In 1862 the company advertised for manufacturers to tender to build the line's first locomotives.
In February 1863, the bid of George England and Co. was accepted and production of the first locomotives was begun. The first of these locomotives, Mountaineer' was delivered to P
Bangor, Gwynedd
Bangor is a city and community in Gwynedd, northwest Wales. It is the oldest city in Wales, one of the smallest cities in the United Kingdom. In Caernarfonshire, it is a university city with a population of 18,808 at the 2011 census, including around 10,500 students at Bangor University, it is one of only six places classed as a city in Wales, although it is only the 25th-largest urban area by population. At the 2001 census, 46.6% of the non-student resident population spoke Welsh. The origins of the city date back to the founding of a monastic establishment on the site of Bangor Cathedral by the Celtic saint Deiniol in the early 6th century AD. Bangor itself is an old Welsh word for a wattled enclosure, such as the one that surrounded the cathedral site; the present cathedral is a somewhat more recent building and has been extensively modified throughout the centuries. While the building itself is not the oldest, not the biggest, the bishopric of Bangor is one of the oldest in the UK. Another claim to fame is that Bangor has the longest High Street in Wales and the United Kingdom.
Friars School was founded as a free grammar school in 1557, the University College of North Wales was founded in 1884. In 1877, the former HMS Clio became a school ship, moored on the Menai Strait at Bangor, had 260 pupils. Closed after the end of hostilities of World War I, she was sold for scrap and broken up in 1919. During World War II, parts of the BBC evacuated to Bangor during the worst of the Blitz. In June 2012 Bangor was the first city in the UK to impose a city centre wide night time curfew on under-16s; the six-month trial was brought in by Gwynedd Council and North Wales police, but opposed by civil rights groups. Bangor has been unique outside of England in using the title of'city' by ancient prescriptive right, due to its long-standing cathedral. However, city status was conferred on it by the Queen in 1974. By means of various measures, it is one of the smallest cities in the UK. Using 2011 statistics, comparing Bangor to: Population of city council areas in Wales, is third with St Davids and St Asaph City council area size within Wales, is the second smallest city behind St Asaph Urban areas within Wales, is third placed behind St Davids and St Asaph City council area size within the UK, is fourth after the City of London, Wells and St Asaph Urban areas within the UK, is fifth placed Population of city council areas within the UK, is sixth.
Bangor lies on the coast of North Wales near the Menai Strait which separates the island of Anglesey from Gwynedd unitary authority, the town of Menai Bridge lying just over the strait. The combined population of the two amounts to 22,184 people as of the 2011 census. Bangor Mountain lies to the east of the main part of the city, but the large housing estate of Maesgeirchen built as council housing, is to the east of the mountain near Port Penrhyn. Bangor Mountain casts a shadow across the High Street, Glan Adda and Hirael areas, so that from November to March some parts of the High Street in particular receive no direct sunlight. Another ridge rises to the north of the High Street, dividing the city centre from the south shore of the Menai Strait. Bangor has two rivers within its boundaries; the River Adda is a culverted watercourse which only appears above ground at its western extremities near the Faenol estate, whilst the River Cegin enters Port Penrhyn at the eastern edge of the city. Port Penrhyn was an important port in the 19th century, exporting the slates produced at the Penrhyn Quarry.
Bangor railway station is located on the North Wales Coast Line from Chester to Holyhead. The A55 runs to the south of Bangor, providing a route to Holyhead and Chester; the nearest airport with international flights is 83 miles by road. Bangor lies at the western end of the North Wales Path, a 60 miles long-distance coastal walking route to Prestatyn. Bangor is on routes NCR 8 and NCR 85 of the National Cycle Network. Classical music is performed in Bangor, with concerts given in the Powis and Prichard-Jones Halls as part of the university's Music at Bangor concert series; the city is home to Storiel. A new arts centre complex, the replacement for Theatr Gwynedd, was scheduled for completion in the summer of 2014, but the opening was delayed until November 2015. Bangor hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1890, 1902, 1915, 1931, 1940, 1943, 1971 and 2005, as well as an unofficial National Eisteddfod event in 1874. Garth Pier is the second longest pier in Wales, the ninth longest in the British Isles, at 1,500 feet in length.
It was opened in 1893 and was a promenade pier, for the amusement of holiday-makers who could stroll among the pinnacle-roofed kiosks. In 1914 it was struck by a vessel; the damaged section was repaired temporarily by the Royal Engineers, but when in 1922, a permanent repair was contemplated, it was found that the damage was more severe than had been thought. The repairs were made at considerable cost and the pier remained open until 1974 when it was nearly condemned as being in poor condition, it was sold for a nominal price to Arfon Borough Council who proposed to demolish it, but the County Council, encouraged by local support, ensured that it survived by obtaining Grade II Listed building status for it. When it was listed that year, the British Listed Buildings inspector considered it to be "the best in Britain of t
Baldwin Locomotive Works
The Baldwin Locomotive Works was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1956. Located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century; the company was for decades the world's largest producer of steam locomotives, but struggled to compete as demand switched to diesel locomotives. Baldwin produced the last of its 70,000-plus locomotives in 1956 and went out of business in 1972; the company has no relation to the E. M. Baldwin and Sons locomotive builder of Australia; the Baldwin Locomotive Works had a humble beginning. Matthias W. Baldwin, the founder, was a jeweller and whitesmith, who, in 1825, formed a partnership with a machinist, engaged in the manufacture of bookbinders' tools and cylinders for calico printing. Baldwin designed and constructed for his own use a small stationary engine, the workmanship of, so excellent and its efficiency so great that he was solicited to build others like it for various parties, thus led to turn his attention to steam engineering.
The original engine was in use and powered many departments of the works for well over 60 years, is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. In 1831, at the request of the Philadelphia Museum, Baldwin built a miniature locomotive for exhibition, such a success that he received that year an order from a railway company for a locomotive to run on a short line to the suburbs of Philadelphia; the Camden and Amboy Railroad Company had shortly before imported a locomotive from England, stored in Bordentown, New Jersey. It had not yet been assembled by Isaac Dripps, he made notes of the principal dimensions. Aided by these figures, he commenced his task; the difficulties attending the execution of this first order were such that they are not understood by present-day mechanics. Modern machine tools did not exist, it was under such circumstances that his first locomotive, christened Old Ironsides, was completed and tried on the Philadelphia and Norristown Railroad on November 23, 1832.
It was at once put in active service, did duty for over 20 years. It was a four-wheeled engine; the wheels were of heavy cast iron hubs, with wooden spokes and rims, wrought iron tires, the frame was made of wood placed outside the wheels. It had a 30 inches diameter boiler. Top speed was 28 mph. Baldwin struggled to survive the Panic of 1837. Production fell from 40 locomotives in 1837 to just nine in 1840 and the company was in debt; as part of the survival strategy, Matthias Baldwin took on two partners, George Vail and George Hufty. Although the partnerships proved short-lived, they helped Baldwin pull through the economic hard times. Zerah Colburn was one of many engineers. Between 1854 and 1861, when Colburn went to work more or less permanently in London, the journalist was in frequent touch with M. W. Baldwin, as recorded in Zerah Colburn: The Spirit of Darkness. Colburn was full of praise for the quality of Baldwin's work. In the 1850s, railroad building became a national obsession, with many new carriers starting up in the Midwest and South.
While this helped drive up demand for Baldwin products, it increased competition as more companies entered the locomotive production field. Still, Baldwin had trouble keeping pace with orders and in the early 1850s began paying workers piece-rate pay. Taking advantage of human nature, this increased incentives and productivity. By 1857, the company employed 600 men, but another economic downturn, this time the Panic of 1857, cut into business again. Output fell by 50 percent in 1858; the Civil War at first appeared disastrous for Baldwin. According to John K. Brown in The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1915: A Study in American Industrial Practice, at the start of the conflict Baldwin had a great dependence on Southern railways as its primary market. In 1860, nearly 80 percent of Baldwin's output went to carriers in states that would soon secede from the Union; as a result, Baldwin's production in 1861 fell more than 50 percent compared to the previous year. However, the loss in Southern sales was counterbalanced by purchases by the U.
S. Military Railroads and the Pennsylvania Railroad, which saw its traffic soar, as Baldwin produced more than 100 engines for carriers during the 1861–1865 war. By the time Matthias Baldwin died in 1866, his company was vying with Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works for the top spot among locomotive producers. By 1870 Baldwin had taken the lead and a decade it was producing 2½ times as many engines as its nearest competitor, according to the U. S. Manufacturing Census. In 1897 the Baldwin Locomotive Works was presented as one of the examples of successful shop management in a series of articles by Horace Lucian Arnold; the article described the Piece Rate System used in the shop management. Burton commented, that "in the Baldwin Locomotive Works... piecework rates are altered... Some rates have remained unchanged for the past twenty years, a workman is there more esteemed when
0-4-2
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-4-2 represents the wheel arrangement with no leading wheels, four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles and two trailing wheels on one axle. While the first locomotives of this wheel arrangement were tender engines, the configuration was often used for tank engines, noted by adding letter suffixes to the configuration, such as 0-4-2T for a conventional side-tank locomotive, 0-4-2ST for a saddle-tank locomotive, 0-4-2WT for a well-tank locomotive and 0-4-2RT for a rack-equipped tank locomotive; the arrangement is sometimes known as Olomana after a Hawaiian 0-4-2 locomotive of 1883. The earliest recorded 0-4-2 locomotives were three goods engines built by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Stanhope and Tyne Railway in 1834; the first locomotive built in Germany in 1838, the Saxonia, was an 0-4-2. In the same year Todd, Kitson & Laird built two examples for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, one of which, LMR 57 Lion, has been preserved.
The Lion could pull up to 200 tons. Over the next quarter of a century, the type was adopted by many early British railways for freight haulage since it afforded greater adhesion than the contemporary 2-2-2 passenger configuration, although in time they were used for mixed traffic duties; the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway acquired the locomotives Minotaurus and Ajax from the British manufacturer Jones and Evans in 1841, to work the line between Vienna and Stockerau. The locomotive Ajax has been preserved at the Technisches Museum Wien since 1992 and is described as "the oldest preserved steam locomotive on the European continent.". In Finland, the 0-4-2 wheel arrangement was represented by the Classes B1 and B2; the Finnish Steam Locomotive Class B1 is an 0-4-2ST locomotive, built from 1868 to 1890 by Beyer and Company at their Gorton Foundry works in Manchester, England. Although the type was not used by any major railroads in North America, H. K. Porter, Inc. and the Baldwin Locomotive Works produced many small tank locomotives of this type for industrial and plantation work.
The 0-4-2T Olomana, built by Baldwin in 1883, arrived in the Kingdom of Hawaii in August 1883 after a two-month journey around Cape Horn. It was owned by Waimanalo Sugar Company on the island of Oahu and hauled cane from the fields to its refinery. In 1905, the Nederlands Indische Spoorweg opened a line between Yogyakarta and Ambarawa via Magelang, a hilly region requiring a rack railway because of the 6.5% gradients. The 0-4-2T wood burning B25 class was made for this line in 1902 by Maschinenfabrik Esslingen, Germany, they were four-cylinder compound locomotives with two of the cylinders working the pinion wheels. There are two examples of B25 class locomotive still in operation, namely B25-02 and B25-03. Both were based in Ambarawa. Locomotive B25-01 may still be found at the entrance to the Ambarawa Railway Museum. On the island of Sumatra, there are some larger cousins of this class being used for hauling coal trains, namely the D18 and E10 classes; the 0-4-2T arrangement was used by two classes of locomotives operated by the New Zealand Railways Department.
The first was the C class of 1873 built as an 0-4-0T. The class was found to be unstable at speeds higher than 15 mph, so by 1880 all members of the class had been converted to 0-4-2T to rectify this problem; the second and more notable 0-4-2T class, the only one built as 0-4-2T, was the unique H class designed to operate the Rimutaka Incline on the Wairarapa Line. The Incline's steep gradient necessitated the use of the Fell mountain railway system, the six members of the H class spent their entire lives operating trains on the Incline. Except for a few brief experiments with other classes, the H class had exclusive use of the Incline from their introduction in 1875 until the Incline's closure in 1955; the class leader, H 199, is preserved on static display at the Fell Engine Museum in Featherston and is the only extant Fell locomotive in the world. The 0-4-2T arrangement was employed for steam locomotives operated by small private industrial railways and bush and mineral tramways. One such locomotive, built by Peckett and Sons in 1957, is operational on the Heritage Park Railway, Whangarei.
She is one of four such locomotives imported from Peckett and Sons, was the last steam locomotive imported into New Zealand in the steam era. Two others worked alongside her and are preserved, whilst the fourth was owned by a forestry railway, who converted her to a Diesel locomotive. In September 1859, Messrs. E. & J. Pickering, contractors to the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company for the construction of the Cape Town-Wellington Railway, imported a small 0-4-0 side-tank steam locomotive from England for use during the construction of the railway; this was the first locomotive in South Africa. In c. 1874, the locomotive was rebuilt to a 0-4-2T configuration before it was shipped to Port Alfred, where it served as construction locomotive on the banks of the Kowie river and was nicknamed Blackie. It was plinthed in the main concourse of Cape Town station. In 1860, the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company took delivery of eight standard gauge tender locomotives with a 0-4-2 wheel arrangement for service on the Cape Town-Wellington Railway, still under construction.
They remained in service on this line while it was being converted to dual standard-and-Cape gauges from around 1872 and were only retired in 1881, when sufficient Cape gauge locomotives were in service. Two 3 ft 6 in Cape gauge tank engine classes of this wheel arrangem
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