Company type | General partnership |
---|---|
Industry | Engineering Heavy industry |
Predecessor | Edward Bury and Company |
Founded | 1826 |
Founder | Edward Bury |
Defunct | 1851 |
Successor | Bedford, Burys & Company |
Headquarters | Tabley Street (1826) Clarence Foundry, Love Lane (1828), , |
Key people | James Kennedy Timothy Abraham Curtis John Vernon |
Products | Locomotives Ships |
Number of employees | 1600 |
Bury, Curtis and Kennedy was a steam locomotive manufacturer in Liverpool, England.
Edward Bury established the works in 1826, under the name Edward Bury and Company. He employed James Kennedy as foreman; Kennedy later became a partner. About 1828, the firm moved to bigger premises in Love Lane, Liverpool, known as the Clarence Foundry.[ citation needed ]
Their first engine was built in 1830. Called Dreadnought, it ran on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. It was objected to because it was on six wheels and was sold to the Bolton and Leigh Railway. The second, the four-coupled Liverpool, later in 1830, [1] used a cranked driving axle, and was also objected to (by George Stephenson) because the 6 ft diameter wheels were too big.
However, they refined their designs and the resulting 2-2-0 and 0-4-0 locomotives quickly became a standard which was emulated by many other manufacturers, becoming known as the "Bury type". Distinguishing features of these engines were inside horizontal (or near-horizontal) cylinders, inside wrought-iron bar frame, which gave them a light appearance, and the round firebox (D-shaped in plan), with a large domed top surmounted by a safety valve.
Thirteen were supplied to the Great Northern Railway (six of them being sub-contracted to William Fairbairn & Sons), and they became the standard classes on the London and Birmingham Railway, the Eastern Counties Railway, the Midland Counties Railway, the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Navigation and Railway Company, the Lancaster and Preston Railway and the North Union Railway. Several were exported to the US, more than from any other British company except R. Stephenson & Co., and where Bury's "bar-frames" became standard. The firm had a reputation for good workmanship, cheapness and reliability.
In 1836 Edward Bury was contracted to run the trains of the London and Birmingham Railway at a cost of one farthing per mile per passenger, and a speed not exceeding 22.5 miles per hour (36.2 km/h), with the L&BR providing locomotives to Bury's specification. This contract was annulled in July 1839 because of the unexpected growth in traffic and the increased speed required, and Bury acted thereafter as Locomotive Superintendent of the L&BR in the normal way. The engines he had specified were built by seven different firms, Bury's firm providing 45 of the original stock of 90.
In 1842, Bury took Kennedy, Timothy Abraham Curtis and John Vernon as partners, and the company changed its name to Bury, Curtis and Kennedy.
Bury continued as Locomotive Superintendent of the London and Birmingham Railway but a few months after it had become part of the London and North Western Railway he resigned in March 1847. In February 1848 he was appointed Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Northern Railway, and in June 1849 became also its general manager.
Meanwhile, the firm of Bury, Curtis & Kennedy continued building locomotives, some of advanced design which had a great influence on subsequent practice, such as the 2-2-2 s for the L&NWR which led directly to the Bloomers, as well as one-offs such as the gigantic 6-2-0 Crampton Liverpool for the L&NWR, the most powerful locomotive in the world in 1848. Six 0-4-2 locomotives were built in 1848 for the LNWR (Southern Division) with 16 in. x 20 in. cylinders, 5 ft. driving wheels, and 3 ft. trailing wheels.
In all Bury, Curtis and Kennedy's Clarence Foundry built about 415 locomotives, but they produced much else besides, from church bells to iron ships. At its height, the firm employed 1,600 men.
The firm lost heavily in making components for the large bascule Blagoveshchensky Bridge over the River Neva at St Petersburg — for which the Imperial Russian Government never paid, according to Bury's widow. This, plus a serious decline in the shipbuilding trade in Liverpool led to the firm's closing down in 1851.
Two of the firm's locomotives have been preserved, Furness Railway 0-4-0 No. 3 (nicknamed "Old Coppernob" or "Coppernob"), built in 1846, now in the National Railway Museum, York and Great Southern and Western Railway 2-2-2 No. 36, built in 1847, now at Cork Kent railway station, Cork, Republic of Ireland.
The London and North Western Railway was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the LNWR was the largest joint stock company in the world. In 1923, it became a constituent of the London, Midland and Scottish (LMS) railway, and, in 1948, the London Midland Region of British Railways. The LNWR's main line remains today as the English and Welsh portions of the West Coast Main Line.
The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, in operation from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR).
Thomas Russell Crampton, MICE, MIMechE was an English engineer born at Broadstairs, Kent, and trained on Brunel's Great Western Railway.
A Crampton locomotive is a type of steam locomotive designed by Thomas Russell Crampton and built by various firms from 1846. The main British builders were Tulk and Ley and Robert Stephenson and Company.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-2-2 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, two powered driving wheels on one axle, and two trailing wheels on one axle. The wheel arrangement both provided more stability and enabled a larger firebox than the earlier 0-2-2 and 2-2-0 types. This wheel arrangement is sometimes described as a Single, although this name could be used to describe any kind of locomotive with a single pair of driving wheels.
John Ramsbottom was an English mechanical engineer. Born in Todmorden, then on the county border of Yorkshire and Lancashire. He was the Chief Mechanical Engineer for the London and North Western Railway for 14 years. He created many inventions for railways but his main legacy is the split metal piston ring, virtually all reciprocating engines continue to use these today.
Tulk and Ley was a 19th-century iron mining company in west Cumberland which also ran an engineering works at Lowca near Whitehaven.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-4-0 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles and no trailing wheels. In most of North America it became known as a Porter.
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The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (LMR) 57 Lion is an early 0-4-2 steam locomotive, which had a top speed of 40 mph (64 km/h) and could pull up to 200 tons. One of a pair designed for hauling freight, Lion was built by Todd, Kitson & Laird of Leeds in 1838. It featured in the 1953 Ealing comedy, The Titfield Thunderbolt.
Wolverton railway works, known locally as Wolverton Works or just The Works, was established in Wolverton, Buckinghamshire, by the London and Birmingham Railway Company in 1838 at the midpoint of the 112-mile-long (180-kilometre) route from London to Birmingham. The line was developed by Robert Stephenson following the great success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway line.
The Furness Railway No.3, nicknamed "Old Coppernob", is a preserved English steam locomotive. It acquired its nickname because of the copper cladding to its dome-shaped "haystack" firebox.
Jones, Turner and Evans was a locomotive manufacturer in Newton-le-Willows, England from 1837, known as Jones and Potts between 1844 and 1852.
The Bury Bar Frame locomotive was an early type of steam locomotive, developed at the Liverpool works of Edward Bury and Company, later named Bury, Curtis, and Kennedy in 1842. By the 1830s, the railway locomotive had evolved into three basic types - those developed by Robert Stephenson, Timothy Hackworth and Edward Bury.
Francis Trevithick (1812–1877), from Camborne, Cornwall, was one of the first locomotive engineers of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR).
Caledonian was an early steam locomotive which had a short career on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR).
London and North Western Railway (LNWR) 2-2-2 No. 3020 Cornwall is a preserved steam locomotive. She was built as a 4-2-2 at Crewe Works in 1847, but was extensively rebuilt and converted into her current form in 1858.
Edward Bury was an English locomotive manufacturer. Born in Salford, Lancashire, he was the son of a timber merchant and was educated at Chester.
Bloomer was a name used to refer to three similar classes of 2-2-2 express passenger locomotives designed by James McConnell for the Southern Division of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). A total of seventy-four were built between 1851 and 1862. The classes were similar in design and layout but differed in dimensions.
William Fernihough was locomotive superintendent of the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) from 1843 to 1845. He is noted for his work on the balancing of railway engines in particular the counterbalanced driving wheel