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Company type | General Partnership |
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Industry | Engineering Heavy industry |
Predecessor | Smalley, Thwaites & Co. |
Founded | 1822 |
Founder | Peter Rothwell |
Defunct | 1864 |
Successor | Rothwell, Hick & Co. Rothwell & Co. Bolton Iron and Steel Co. Henry Bessemer & Co. |
Headquarters | Union Foundry, Black Horse Street, , |
Key people | Benjamin Hick Peter Rothwell Jr. Benjamin Cubitt |
Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell was an engineering company in Bolton, England. Set up in 1822, the partners became interested in the production of steam locomotives after the Rainhill Trials. The company's first engine was Union, a vertical boiler, 2-2-0 with horizontal cylinders for the Bolton and Leigh Railway [1] of which Hick and Rothwell were promoters and original shareholders, followed by three more locomotives the following year for American railways.
In 1832, Benjamin Hick left to set up his own business, B. Hick and Sons, to be replaced by Benjamin Cubitt, (younger brother of William Cubitt) from Fenton, Murray and Jackson. The firm then became Rothwell and Company. A further order for America was fulfilled in 1833, then for a couple of years the firm was occupied with pumps and stationary engines.
Peter Rothwell Jr | |
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Born | 1793 |
Died | 1849 |
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Civil and Mechanical engineer |
Known for | Steam engines Locomotives Art collector |
About 1827 the company supplied three steam engines to André Koechlin & Cie in France, one for the Mulhouse cotton mill for which Sharp, Roberts and Co. supplied most of the equipment, one for coal mines at Ronchamp, and one for the Bourcart factory. [2] Hick attended at least two of these installations in person during 1827. [3]
A 1:10 scale model of a double jib crane designed by Benjamin Hick is displayed at the Musee des Arts et Metiers. [4] [5]
From 1836 steam locomotives became their main business. Up to 1840 they produced 56, 28 of which went abroad. Of note is a 4-2-0 for the South Carolina Railroad to the design of Horatio Allen. This had 4-foot-6-inch (1.37 m) drivers, with a swivelling front bogie, and reputed to have worked for 35 years. A deal of sub-contract work came from Edward Bury and Company.
From 1841, the company began a batch of engines for the broad gauge Great Western Railway. The largest order came in 1847 for 28 2-2-2 engines for the London and South Western Railway.
Possibly the most remarkable were some 4-2-4 engines for the Bristol and Exeter Railway built in 1853/4 with 9-foot-diameter (2.7 m) unflanged driving wheels, and two ball-and-socket swivelled bogies. They weighed 42 tons and achieved speeds of 82 miles per hour (132 km/h), the fastest engines of the time.[ citation needed ]
The quality of the company's products brought in repeat orders. Many of the engines were still in service twenty years later. From 1857 the engines were to Alexander Allan's design and were similar to the Old Crewe type. These were sold to the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway and the Eastern Counties Railway.
The last to be built were four broad gauge engines for the Bristol and Exeter Railway and two saddle tanks for the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway.
In the face of reduced business and increasing competition, the company closed in 1864. Part of the works was taken over by the Bolton Iron and Steel Company, which was later absorbed by Henry Bessemer and Company in 1906.
A Fairlie locomotive is a type of articulated steam locomotive that has the driving wheels on bogies. The locomotive may be double-ended or single ended. Most double-ended Fairlies had wheel arrangements of 0-4-4-0T or 0-6-6-0T.
Oliver Vaughan Snell Bulleid CBE was a British railway and mechanical engineer best known as the Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the Southern Railway between 1937 and the 1948 nationalisation, developing many well-known locomotives.
In the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotive wheel arrangement, an 0-4-4-0 is a locomotive with no leading wheels, two sets of four driving wheels, and no trailing wheels. The arrangement is chosen to give the articulation of a locomotive with only the short rigid wheelbase of an 0-4-0, but with its weight spread across eight wheels, and with all the weight carried on the driving wheels; effectively a flexible 0-8-0. Articulated examples were constructed as Mallet, Meyer, BMAG and Double Fairlie locomotives and also as geared locomotives such as Shay, Heisler, and Climax types. A similar configuration was used on some Garratt locomotives, but it is referred to as 0-4-0+0-4-0. In the electric and diesel eras, the Bo-Bo is comparable and closest to the Meyer arrangement of two swivelling bogies.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-8-0 represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, eight powered and coupled driving wheels on four axles and no trailing wheels. Locomotives of this type are also referred to as eight coupled.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-2-4 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, two powered driving wheels on one axle, and four trailing wheels on two axles.
The Bolton and Leigh Railway (B&LR) was the first public railway in Lancashire. It opened for goods on 1 August 1828, and thus preceded the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) by two years. Passengers were carried from 1831. The railway operated independently until 1845 when it became part of the Grand Junction Railway.
A Meyer locomotive is a type of articulated locomotive that has two separate bogies, upon which the boiler and firebox swivel. The design was never as popular as the Garratt or Mallet locomotives. It can be best regarded as 19th Century competition for the early compound Mallet and also the Fairlie articulated designs. Most single cab modern trains are of a similar design such as power cars, freight diesel locomotives, and some passenger locomotives.
Benjamin Hick was an English civil and mechanical engineer, art collector and patron whose improvements to the steam engine and invention of scientific tools were held in high esteem by the engineering profession; some of Hick's improvements became public property without claiming the patent rights he was entitled to or without their source being known.
B. Hick and Sons, subsequently Hick, Hargreaves & Co, was a British engineering company based at the Soho Ironworks in Bolton, England. Benjamin Hick, a partner in Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell, later Rothwell, Hick & Co., set up the company in partnership with two of his sons, John (1815–1894) and Benjamin Jr (1818–1845) in 1833.
George Forrester and Company was a British marine engine and locomotive manufacturer at Vauxhall Foundry in Liverpool, established by Scottish engineer George Forrester. The company opened in 1827 as iron founders and commenced building steam locomotives in 1834.
The Beugniot lever (Beugniot-Hebel) is a mechanical device used on a number of locomotives to improve curve running. It was named after its inventor Édouard Beugniot.
The Elsässische Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Grafenstaden was a heavy industry firm located at Grafenstaden in the Alsace, near the city of Strasbourg.
Córas Iompair Éireann No. CC1, generally known as the Turf Burner, was a prototype 0-6-6-0 articulated steam locomotive designed by Oliver Bulleid to burn turf and built at CIÉ's Inchicore Works in Dublin. CC1 shared some, but not all, of the characteristics of Bulleid's previous attempt to develop a modern steam locomotive, the Leader. Like the one completed Leader, CC1 had a relatively short career and was never used in front-line service. It was the last steam locomotive to be constructed for an Irish railway.
John Hick was a wealthy English industrialist, art collector and Conservative Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1868 to 1880, he is associated with the improvement of steam-engines for cotton mills and the work of his firm Hick, Hargreaves and Co. universal in countries where fibre was spun or fabrics woven.
The Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques, or SACM, is an engineering company with its headquarters in Mulhouse, Alsace, which produced railway locomotives, textile and printing machinery, diesel engines, boilers, lifting equipment, firearms and mining equipment. SACM also produced the first atomic reactor at Marcoule.
The South African Railways Class FC 2-6-2+2-6-2 of 1925 was an articulated steam locomotive.
The Koechlin family are a French Alsatian family which acquired its wealth in the textile industry and became leading industrialists and politicians of the region.
Édouard Beugniot (1822-1878) was a French engineer, designer of the Beugniot lever, a system for articulating the driving axles of railway locomotives.
The Nord 2.821 to 2.911 and 2.201 to 2.212, also referred to as Outrances, was a series of French 2-4-0 and 4-4-0 express passenger locomotives of the Chemins de Fer du Nord.
Title: Crane Inventory no .: 04038-0000- Double Crane, Hick and Rothwell, before 1849 Benjamin Hick, 1790-1842, English civil engineer and mechanic Hick and Rothwell, engineering company in Bolton, England Public works