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.
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.
The Royal Albert Bridge is a railway bridge which spans the River Tamar in England between Plymouth, Devon and Saltash, Cornwall. Its unique design consists of two 455-foot (138.7 m) lenticular iron trusses 100 feet (30.5 m) above the water, with conventional plate-girder approach spans. This gives it a total length of 2,187.5 feet (666.8 m). It carries the Cornish Main Line railway in and out of Cornwall. It is adjacent to the Tamar Bridge which opened in 1961 to carry the A38 road.
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.
The year 1859 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
The Great Western Railway Victoria Class were 2-4-0 broad gauge steam locomotives for passenger train work. This class was introduced into service in two batches between August 1856 and May 1864. They were all withdrawn between 1876 and December 1880.
A tubular bridge is a bridge built as a rigid box girder section within which the traffic is carried. Famous examples include the original Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait, the Conwy railway bridge over the River Conwy, designed and tested by William Fairbairn and built by Robert Stephenson between 1846 and 1850, and the original Victoria Bridge in Montreal.
Robert Pearson Brereton was an English railway engineer. He worked under Isambard Kingdom Brunel for more than twenty years and, following Brunel's death, completed many of his projects.
Baron Pietro Carlo Giovanni Battista Marochetti was an Italian-born French sculptor who worked in France, Italy and Britain. He completed many public sculptures, often in a neo-classical style, plus reliefs, memorials and large equestrian monuments in bronze and marble. In 1848, Marochetti settled in England, where he received commissions from Queen Victoria. Marochetti received great recognition during his lifetime, being made a baron in Italy and was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government.
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.
George Hennet (1799–1857) was an English railway engineer and contractor. He undertook many contracts for Isambard Kingdom Brunel's broad gauge railways in the South West of England and funded the provision of extra facilities on the South Devon Railway, these formed the basis of a general trading business that he conducted.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859) was an English mechanical and civil engineer.
Sir Bradford Leslie KCIE (1831-1926) was an English civil engineer who specialised in bridges and was a pupil of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. His most notable achievement was the 1887 Jubilee Bridge.
Richard Coeur de Lion is a Grade II listed equestrian statue of the 12th-century English monarch Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, who reigned from 1189 to 1199. It stands on a granite pedestal in Old Palace Yard outside the Palace of Westminster in London, facing south towards the entrance to the House of Lords. It was created by Baron Carlo Marochetti, an Italian sculptor whose works were popular with European royalty and the nobility, though often less well regarded by critics and the artistic establishment. The statue was first produced in clay and displayed at The Great Exhibition in 1851, where it was located outside the west entrance to the Crystal Palace. It was well received at the time and two years later Queen Victoria and Prince Albert headed a list of illustrious subscribers to a fund that aimed to raise money for the casting of the statue in bronze.
A balloon flange girder or (colloquially) balloon topper is a form of vertical I-beam wrought iron plate girder, where the top flange, instead of being a simple flat plate, is extended into a hollow tube. When a girder is subjected to a positive bending moment the top flange acts in compression making a flat plate flange more susceptible to local buckling than the balloon flange is.
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.
