George Stephenson was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer during the Industrial Revolution. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians as a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. His chosen rail gauge, sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", was the basis for the 4 feet 8+1⁄2 inches (1.435 m) standard gauge used by most of the world's railways.
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft —later slightly widened to 7 ft 1⁄4 in —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892.
Robert Stephenson FRS HFRSE FRSA DCL was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father. Robert has been called the greatest engineer of the 19th century.
Joseph Locke FRSA was a notable English civil engineer of the nineteenth century, particularly associated with railway projects. Locke ranked alongside Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel as one of the major pioneers of railway development.
William Jessop was an English civil engineer, best known for his work on canals, harbours and early railways in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet was an English railway locomotive and transatlantic cable engineer. He was the first Superintendent of Locomotive Engines on the Great Western Railway from 1837 to 1864 and its chairman from 1865 until his death in 1889.
The first Locomotives of the Great Western Railway (GWR) were specified by Isambard Kingdom Brunel but Daniel Gooch was soon appointed as the railway's Locomotive Superintendent. He designed several different 7 ft 1⁄4 in broad gauge types for the growing railway, such as the Firefly and later Iron Duke Class 2-2-2s. In 1864 Gooch was succeeded by Joseph Armstrong who brought his standard gauge experience to the workshops at Swindon. To replace some of the earlier locomotives, he put broad gauge wheels on his standard gauge locomotives and from this time on all locomotives were given numbers, including the broad gauge ones that had previously carried just names.
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 configuration was introduced in 1834 on Robert Stephenson's 'Patentee locomotive' but it was later popularly named Jenny Lind, after the Jenny Lind locomotive which in turn was named after the popular singer. They were also sometimes described as Singles, although this name could be used to describe any kind of locomotive with a single pair of driving wheels.
The Firefly was a class of broad gauge 2-2-2 steam locomotives used for passenger services on the Great Western Railway. The class was introduced into service between March 1840 and December 1842, and withdrawn between December 1863 and July 1879.
James Meadows Rendel FRS was a British civil engineer.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer, who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th-century engineering giants", and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions". Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway (GWR), a series of steamships including the first purpose-built transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.
The West Cornwall Railway was a railway company in Cornwall, Great Britain, formed in 1846 to construct a railway between Penzance and Truro. It purchased the existing Hayle Railway, and improved its main line, and built new sections between Penzance and Hayle, and between Redruth and Truro, and opened throughout in 1852.
Vale of Neath Railway 0-6-0ST locomotives were 0-6-0ST steam locomotives for working the heavy goods traffic on the Vale of Neath Railway and its associated lines in Wales. The first of 13 broad gauge locomotives entered service in 1854 and the last was withdrawn in 1886. The remaining four were standard gauge locomotives.
The first 19 locomotives ordered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Railway included two unusual Haigh Foundry locomotives.
The Table Bay Harbour 0-4-0WT of 1879 was a South African steam locomotive from the pre-Union era in the Cape of Good Hope.
A bronze statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, also known as Brunel Monument or the Isambard Brunel Monument, by Carlo Marochetti, stands on the Victoria Embankment in London, England, at the west end of Temple Place. The statue rests on a Portland stone pedestal, with flanking screens and benches, by the architect Richard Norman Shaw.
South Australian Railways locomotives 1, 2 and 3, the first locomotives delivered to the railway, arrived in time for deployment on the soon-to-be-opened Adelaide to Port Adelaide line. Built in 1855 by William Fairbairn & Sons in Manchester, UK, they arrived at Port Adelaide on the brig Theodore in November 1855, and were unloaded in January 1856; they were assembled and placed service in the succeeding three months. They were named Adelaide, Victoria and Albert but were numbered only after many years, and a locomotive class was never assigned to them.
A bronze statue of Robert Stephenson by Carlo Marochetti usually stands on a red granite plinth in the forecourt of Euston railway station in London, England. Erected in 1871, it is one of few surviving elements of the original station after it was redeveloped in the 1960s, and it became a Grade II listed building in 1974. It was temporarily removed in 2020 to allow the station to be remodelled to accommodate the new High Speed 2 (HS2) railway line.
