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Sans Pareil is a steam locomotive built by Timothy Hackworth which took part in the 1829 Rainhill Trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, held to select a builder of locomotives. The name is French and means 'peerless' or 'without equal'.
While a capable locomotive for the day, its technology was somewhat antiquated compared to George and Robert Stephenson's Rocket , the winner of the Rainhill Trials and the £500 prize money. Instead of the fire tube boiler of Rocket, Sans Pareil had a double return flue. To increase the heating surface area, the two flues were joined by a U-shaped tube at the forward end of the boiler; the firebox and chimney were both positioned at the same end, one on either side.
Sans Pareil had two cylinders, mounted vertically at the opposite end to the chimney, and driving one pair of driving wheels directly - the other pair were driven via connecting rods, in the typical steam locomotive fashion.
At the Rainhill Trials, Sans Pareil was excluded from the prize because it was slightly over the maximum permitted weight. [1] Nevertheless it performed very well, but had a strange rolling gait due to its vertical cylinders and the draft from the blastpipe was, in Hackworth's trademark style, very strong, so most of the coke was expelled out of the chimney unburnt. It was this more than its antiquated design that caused its poor fuel economy.[ citation needed ] It was pulled out of the competition because of a cracked cylinder: the design thickness for the cylinder walls was some 1+3⁄4 inches (44 mm), but at the point of failure, it was found to be a mere 5⁄8 inch (16 mm).
The manufacture of the cylinders had been contracted out to Robert Stephenson & Co., who were accused by Hackworth's supporters of sabotage, but as he had had over twenty cylinders cast and chose the best two for the locomotive, foul play on the part of the Stephensons was unlikely. After the trials, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway bought Sans Pareil as well as Rocket. It was subsequently leased to the Bolton and Leigh Railway where it ran until 1844. It was then used by John Hargreaves as a stationary boiler at the Coppull Colliery, Chorley until 1863. [1] Thereafter, Sans Pareil was restored and presented to the Patent Office Museum (which later became the Science Museum) in 1864 by John Hick. The engine now resides at the Shildon Locomotion Museum on static display.
A replica locomotive, built in 1980, is now preserved by the National Railway Museum at its new Shildon Locomotion Museum annex, which is also home to what remains of the original locomotive.
In the late 1970’s, the company L-S LOC AG in Basel (Switzerland) built several live steam models, also the Sans Pareil in several batches of 500 pieces. The Stephenson’s Rocket followed, the Crampton locomotive was the last model produced in the early 1980’s. In order to have a consistent appearance, all visible surfaces of all models were gold plated. [2]
LMS Royal Scot Class 4-6-0 locomotive 6126 was originally named Sans Pareil. This loco was built by the North British Locomotive Company at Glasgow in September 1927 and withdrawn in October 1963 as 46126 Royal Army Service Corps . An AL6 electric locomotive built at Doncaster Works in 1965, number E3106 (later numbered 86214) carried the name 'Sans Pareil' between 1981 and 2005. 86214 was scrapped in 2006.
The Rainhill trials was an important competition run from the 6 to 14 October 1829, to test George Stephenson's argument that locomotives would have the best motive power for the then nearly-completed Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR). Ten locomotives were entered, of which five were able to compete, running along a 1 mile (1.6 km) length of level track at Rainhill, in Lancashire.
Stephenson's Rocket is an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. It was built for and won the Rainhill Trials of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), held in October 1829 to show that improved locomotives would be more efficient than stationary steam engines.
Timothy Hackworth was an English steam locomotive engineer who lived in Shildon, County Durham, England and was the first locomotive superintendent of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
Steam power developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 17th century, to useful pumps for mining in 1700, and then to Watt's improved steam engine designs in the late 18th century. It is these later designs, introduced just when the need for practical power was growing due to the Industrial Revolution, that truly made steam power commonplace.
Locomotion, previously known as Locomotion the National Railway Museum at Shildon, is a railway museum in Shildon, County Durham, England. The museum was renamed in 2017 when it became part of the Science Museum Group.
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Cycloped was an early horse-powered locomotive, built by Thomas Shaw Brandreth of Liverpool, which competed unsuccessfully in the Rainhill trials of October 1829.
An 0-2-2, in the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement, is one that has two coupled driving wheels followed by two trailing wheels, with no leading wheels. The configuration was briefly built by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
Novelty was an early steam locomotive built by John Ericsson and John Braithwaite to take part in the Rainhill Trials in 1829.
Planet was an early steam locomotive built in 1830 by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
Henry Booth was a British corn merchant, businessman and engineer particularly known as one of the key people behind the construction and management of the pioneering Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&M), the world's first steam railway conducting both scheduled passenger services and freight.
Robert Stephenson and Company was a locomotive manufacturing company founded in 1823 in Forth Street, Newcastle upon Tyne in England. It was the first company in the world created specifically to build railway engines.
The blastpipe is part of the exhaust system of a steam locomotive that discharges exhaust steam from the cylinders into the smokebox beneath the chimney in order to increase the draught through the fire.
The history of rail transport in Great Britain to 1830 covers the period up to the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world's first intercity passenger railway operated solely by steam locomotives. The earliest form of railways, horse-drawn wagonways, originated in Germany in the 16th century. Soon wagonways were also built in Britain. However, the first use of steam locomotives was in Wales. The invention of wrought iron rails, together with Richard Trevithick's pioneering steam locomotive meant that Britain had the first modern railways in the world.
A boiler or steam generator is a device used to create steam by applying heat energy to water. Although the definitions are somewhat flexible, it can be said that older steam generators were commonly termed boilers and worked at low to medium pressure but, at pressures above this, it is more usual to speak of a steam generator.
Bradyll is an early steam locomotive built by Timothy Hackworth at his Soho Works in Shildon, England in 1840. It is the oldest surviving locomotive with an 0-6-0 wheel arrangement.
A "Scotch" marine boiler is a design of steam boiler best known for its use on ships.
A shell or flued boiler is an early and relatively simple form of boiler used to make steam, usually for the purpose of driving a steam engine. The design marked a transitional stage in boiler development, between the early haystack boilers and the later multi-tube fire-tube boilers. A flued boiler is characterized by a large cylindrical boiler shell forming a tank of water, traversed by one or more large flues containing the furnace. These boilers appeared around the start of the 19th century and some forms remain in service today. Although mostly used for static steam plants, some were used in early steam vehicles, railway locomotives and ships.
The steam locomotive exhaust system consists of those parts of a steam locomotive which together discharge exhaust steam from the cylinders in order to increase the draught through the fire. It usually consists of the blastpipe, smokebox, and chimney, although later designs also include second and third stage nozzles.
The Hetton Colliery Lyon or Lyons is an early British steam locomotive that still survives in preservation. It is remarkable for having continued working into the early 20th century.
