Thomas William Rumble FRSE MICE MIME FGS (1832–1883) was a 19th-century British railway engineer (and locomotive designer), architect, geologist and adventurer.
He was born in London on Boxing Day, 26 December 1832. He was educated at Reading school by Richard Valpy. Around 1847 he joined his father's architectural practice in London. [1]
Around 1848 he went to the east coast of the United States. In 1850 he obtained the post of Assistant Engineer on the Central Railway of New Jersey. Jumping jobs he was also then involved in laying out the Erie and Forest Lawn Cemetery, Berks County Baths and Buffalo Public Washhouses. [2]
He returned to England in the summer of 1852 undertaking the construction of All Saints Church at Kensington Park. [3] However, with a continuing wanderlust went to India at the end of the summer of 1853, gaining employment on the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway. However, ill-health caused him to return to England in February 1854. After a short period of freelancing as Superintending Engineer for the Arthington Water Works under Thomas Hawksley he set up an office in the Westminster district of London. In 1857 he was appointed Engineer to the Atlas Steel Works in Sheffield.
In 1860 he became a Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. His address was then given as 6 Broad Street Buildings in London. [4] In 1866 he appears as the designer of a locomotive for the Great Western Railway. [5] In 1869 he made a study tour to the United States to look at recent technological improvements. A further visit in 1872 included visiting Chicago after the Great Fire to study how bank vaults had survived the inferno. On his return to London he oversaw the construction of extensive new vaults for the National Safe Deposit Company on Queen Victoria Street.
In 1876 he became Chief Engineer to the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company. This position included laying the main 30 inch water main under the River Thames.
In 1881 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were John Frederick Bateman, Robert Etheridge, James Abernethy and Sir John Hawkshaw. [6]
His health began to fail in 1881, suffering from anemia (probably pernicious anaemia contracted during his trip to India). He retired to the Isle of Wight late in 1882.
He died on 21 April 1883 at Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight and is buried there in the New Churchyard.
The Dean Cemetery is a historically important Victorian cemetery north of the Dean Village, west of Edinburgh city centre, in Scotland. It lies between Queensferry Road and the Water of Leith, bounded on its east side by Dean Path and on its west by the Dean Gallery. A 20th-century extension lies detached from the main cemetery to the north of Ravelston Terrace. The main cemetery is accessible through the main gate on its east side, through a "grace and favour" access door from the grounds of Dean Gallery and from Ravelston Terrace. The modern extension is only accessible at the junction of Dean Path and Queensferry Road.
Thomas Russell Crampton, MICE, MIMechE was an English engineer born at Broadstairs, Kent, and trained on Brunel's Great Western Railway.
Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet, KCMG, LLD, FRSE was an English civil engineer specialising in the construction of railways and railway infrastructure. In the 1850s and 1860s, he was engineer for the world's first underground railway, London's Metropolitan Railway, built by the "cut-and-cover" method under city streets. In the 1880s, he was chief engineer for the Forth Bridge, which opened in 1890. Fowler's was a long and eminent career, spanning most of the 19th century's railway expansion, and he was engineer, adviser or consultant to many British and foreign railway companies and governments. He was the youngest president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, between 1865 and 1867, and his major works represent a lasting legacy of Victorian engineering.
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.
James Walker was an influential British civil engineer.
Alexander Lyman Holley was an American mechanical engineer, inventor, and founding member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He was considered the foremost steel and plant engineer and designer of his time, especially in regard to applying research to modern steel manufacturing processes.
Bonchurch is a small village to the east of Ventnor, now largely connected to the latter by suburban development, on the southern part of the Isle of Wight, England. One of the oldest settlements on the Isle of Wight, it is situated on The Undercliff adjacent to the Bonchurch Landslips Site of Special Scientific Interest. The main village is backed by a cliff to the north, with the Upper Bonchurch section on the clifftop halfway up St Boniface Down on the main A3055 road.
James Edward McConnell (1815–1883) was one of the first locomotive engineers of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). He was Locomotive Superintendent of the LNWR's Southern Division at Wolverton railway works from 1847 to 1862 and oversaw the design of the "Bloomer" and "Patent" locomotives. He was also one of the founding members of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and its first chairman, discussing the issue of an institute in 1846 at Bromsgrove.
William Henry Maw was a British civil engineer and astronomer. Born into a seafaring family and orphaned at age 16, Maw was taken into the workshops of the Eastern Counties Railway as an assistant before progressing to the design office as a draughtsman. He was made the head of the office and designed the first outside cylinder locomotive for use in India. In 1865 he founded the journal Engineering and remained an editor for the rest of his life. He left the railway and became a consulting engineer his many works including printing presses for several newspapers and magazines. He was president of the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Civil Engineers.
John Frederick La Trobe Bateman was an English civil engineer whose work formed the basis of the modern United Kingdom water supply industry. For more than 50 years from 1835 he designed and constructed reservoirs and waterworks. His largest project was the Longdendale Chain system that has supplied Manchester with much of its water since the 19th century. The construction of what was in its day the largest chain of reservoirs in the world began in 1848 and was completed in 1877. Bateman became "the greatest dam-builder of his generation".
Sir Henry Whatley Tyler was a pioneering British engineer and politician, who contributed to the Great Exhibition of 1851 and whose collections helped found the Science Museum in South Kensington. His interests were mainly in railways, where he served Inspector of Railways and a railway company director but also in water and iron working. He was also a Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 to 1892.
Daniel Kinnear Clark was a Scottish consulting railway engineer. He served as Locomotive Superintendent to the Great North of Scotland Railway between 1853 and 1855, and also wrote comprehensive books on railway engineering matters.
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.
Major-General Sir John Clayton Cowell PC KCB was a British Army officer and later Master of the Queen's Household and lieutenant-governor of Windsor Castle.
Thomas Lindsay Galloway MA, FRSE. FGS, AMInst, MInstME was the youngest son of William Galloway (1799–1854) shawl manufacturer and coal master of Paisley, Scotland and Margaret Lindsay (1818–1902). He was a civil and mining engineer and coal master of Argyll Colliery, Campbeltown, Kintyre, and like his brothers, Sir William Galloway and Robert Lindsay Galloway, he was also the author of several papers, lectures, designs and books.
George Frederick Armstrong,, was a distinguished 19th century English academic specialising in railway, civil, and sanitary engineering who served as the Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. Over the course of his life he became a member of many learned societies and the author of many papers and lectures.
Events from the year 1808 in Scotland.