William Adams (locomotive engineer)
William Adams ( * October 15, 1823 in Mill Place, † August 7, 1904 in Putney ) was the locomotives operating head of the North London Railway from 1858 to 1873, the Great Eastern Railway from 1873 to 1878 and the London and South Western Railway of 1878 until his retirement in 1895. He is well known for its steam locomotives, especially the Adams bogie, a machine with lateral centric springs ( which initially were made of rubber ) to improve stability at high speeds. He is not to be confused with William Bridges Adams (1797-1872), another locomotive engineer who, confusingly, invented the Adams axle - a radial axis, which was used in locomotives by William Adams.
Life and work
Adams was born on 15 October 1823 in Mill Place, Limehouse, London, where his father was an engineer at the nearby East and West India Docks Company. After attending a private school in Margate, Kent, he went to the same place as his father into teaching. The railroad surveyor Charles Vignoles had previously worked on the construction of the London Hafendockbecken and his company secured Adams then on to assist in the design office. The last years of his apprenticeship he spent at Orchard yard of Miller & Ravenhill, a manufacturer of machinery for steamboats.
1848 Adams employee at Philip Taylor, an iron goods manufacturers, machine fitter ( historically: millwright ) and was former assistant of Marc Brunel, who had offices in Marseille and Genoa, to build marine engines and install. As he spoke fluent French and Italian, Adams supervision was soon leading engineer of the fleet of the Kingdom of Sardinia, although he still nominally worked for Taylor. In 1852 he married Isabella Park, the daughter of another English machine mechanic who worked in Genoa, and returned to England.
After his return to England, Adams worked as a consultant for possible routes for a railway on the Isle of Wight, as Supervisor on the construction of the docks of Cardiff and in the planning of new production facilities in Bow in London for the East & West India Docks & Birmingham Junction Railway, which soon changed its name to North London Railway. This led in 1854 to his appointment as a locomotive engineer of that company, a post he held for eighteen years. Here he created his famous series of 2'B locomotives, the first laterally sprung chassis and the first through train brake had ( the Adams Bogie ).
1873 Adams took a similar position at the neighboring Great Eastern Railway (GER ). Here he was not so well with the demands and his locomotive designs for the company, a widely dispersed group compared with the North London were undersized for the work on the main line. But his conversion of the Stratford work on modern, standardized equipment saved the company a lot of money, so that when he went to London and South Western Railway ( LSWR ) in 1878, his reputation was intact.
Adams designed five locomotives for the GER, including two passenger tank locomotives in two sizes for the suburbs, a fast - series and a design for heavy carbon transport. The latter, GER Class 527, was the first 1'C series, which was built for use in the UK, although it was first put into service after his successor, Massey Bromley, had introduced some improvements to it.
When he designed LSWR 524 locomotives, led the expansion of the Nine Elms works and the transfer of the Carriage and Wagon works to Eastleigh. For health reasons, he went on May 29, 1895 in retirement. He lived in Putney until his death on August 7, 1904.