"Love it as though it were a human being" - Edward Entwistle, the First Driver of Stephenson's Rocket

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) opened on the 15^th October 1830. It was the world’s first intercity railway, and while the Stockton to Darlington had broken new ground in 1825 by being the first to convey passengers, the L&MR was the first to look and act like all the railway companies that came after it. Its stations had all the features we would associate with rail travel today, its trains were hauled solely by steam engines and there were the first timetable. Of particular note was that the first train was hauled by the winning design of the company’s competition to find a suitable form of traction. This was George Stephenson’s Rocket.

What I have just recounted can be found in any railway book covering this period. However, what receives less attention is the staff that manned this pioneering railway. Thus, in my research this week I came across the story of Edward Entwistle, the man who drove the L&MR’s first train. Indeed, this led me to a number of other sources that has allowed me to reconstruct much of his life.

Entwistle was born on the 24^th March 1815 at Tyldesley Banks near Wigan in Lancashire. While some accounts say that he was apprenticed to the Duke of Bridgewater’s Manchester works at the age of eleven, his own account made no mention of this. Rather, it seems that he was apprenticed at Robert Stephenson’s Newcastle works for seven years. It was here that Rocket was constructed, and Entwistle had a good mechanical mind and helped in the construction of various parts and the locomotive’s assembly.[1]

While Rockethad helped move materials during the construction of the line, its first day of glory came on the 15^th October 1830 with the L&MR’s opening. Entwistle was in luck that day when the driver chosen to drive the inaugural train pulled out. Thus, like most very early railwaymen, he received his position purely on the basis of recommendation. Robert Stephenson asked his works foreman whether he knew of a good man to drive the train. The foreman could not, yet asked the great engineer whether he would be willing to try the apprentice, Entwistle. [2] After Stephenson had submitted him to a detailed examination, the fifteen year old Entwistle was allowed to step up onto the locomotive’s footplate. In 1907 he recalled:

“I stepped into the cab, pulled the throttle; the steam hissed, the wheels creaked and groaned, and amid the cheers of thousands upon thousands of people we started on our journey. Slow at first, but soon more rapidly until we were bowling pleasantly along the country, with the continual accompaniment of cheers and shouts.”[3]

Luckily, Entwistle was not at the helm when the Member of Parliament for Liverpool, William Huskison, was run over by Rocket later that day. Indeed, the distinction of being the first train driver to kill an individual goes to another noted engineer, Joseph Locke.[4]

After the line’s opening Entwistle remained the Rocket’s driver, driving it the thirty-one miles between Liverpool and Manchester in the morning and returning in the evening. However, after two years, and still only at the age of seventeen, he had had enough of the work. It was hard graft and every day he was exposed to the elements. Stephenson accepted his resignation, and as the engineer was impressed with the teenager’s performance, found him a position on the Duke of Bridgewater’s sailing vessels (This is possibly where the confusion about his apprenticeship originated from.) He stayed on these vessels for six years.[5]

At the age of twenty-two Entwistle emigrated to the United States. Initially times were hard and all he could earn was a dollar a day as the engineer on the steamer Troy which operated in the Hudson River and Long Island sound. However, when the boat was decommissioned, Entwistle took the engines and set up a rolling mill. In 1844 he moved to Chicago and worked as an engineer on stationary engines and boats. Lastly, he became the engineer at two major mills and retired in 1889 to a farm he had bought in 1845.[6] He died in 1909 at Des Moines, Iowa at the age of 95.

It is interesting to note that with Entwistle we find the start of a phenomenon that all train drivers, from then until the current day, have experienced; that of great affection for the machines that were in their charge. He recalled that while Rocket was primitive, he was “still loyal to that old engine, and love it as though it were a human being.”[7] How many drivers through the ages could express a similar sentiment?

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[1] Otago Witness, 7 August 1907, p.78

[2] The Yorkshire Herald and The York Herald, Saturday, August 15, 1896 p. 12

[3] Otago Witness, 7 August 1907, p.78

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opening_of_the_Liverpool_and_Manchester_Railway

[5] Otago Witness, 7 August 1907, p.78

[6] Hird, Frank, ‘Driver of the first passenger train,’ in Lancashire Stories, (London, 1994), p.15-16

[7] Otago Witness, 7 August 1907, p.78

Unlocking the Early Railway Manager - Pt 3 - Three Engineers (again) and Some Soldiers

This is the third part of the ‘Turnip Rail Project’ that I hope will determine the nature of early railway manager. For those of you who are unaware of the process I am undertaking, I will, on my blog, be doing some new and original research. Simply put, our knowledge of early railway managers is minimal. There are some historians who have made broad statements about their backgrounds and work, however, more actual statistical research needs to be done. If you would like more information please see the first Blog post in the series (here) and the follow-up (here) where I presented my first findings and preliminary thoughts.

Principally, the 1848 Railway Officials Directory showed that three engineers, Joseph Locke, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson, dominated the engineering activities in the early British railway industry. However, my good friend Kevin was good enough to point out that many of these engineers may have been appointed for ornamental reasons so as to lend integrity to the company and allow them to attract potential investment.

I thought I would look a bit further into this. I found that of the 51 companies that had Locke, Brunel and Stephenson involved, in only 23 cases was their engineering role shared with one or more other engineer. Thus, the possibility of their appointments having ‘ornamental’ status was increased in these cases.

This left 28 of the cases where Locke, Brunel and Stephenson were the sole engineer listed, and while the actual day-to-day engineering of these lines may have been under the charge of men in their employ, the whole of the engineering side of their businesses would have been under their ultimate control. The 28 lines on which they had charge of engineering totalled 1396.16 miles, or 33.17% of the 4208.85 miles that the three men were involved with in some way. The 28 concerns were mostly small or medium sized railways, and the only large one was the Great Western Railway over which Brunel had complete control of its engineering affairs. Thus, as they were only engineers involved their appointments were more than just being ‘ornamental.’

Conversely, the 23 companies that had multiple engineers, but were under the three men’s partial charge, constituted 2812.6875 miles, or 66.82% of the total. Indeed, in many of these cases the railways were some of the largest concerns in the land, such as the London and North Western, London and South Western, Midland, York, Newcastle and Berwick and South Eastern Railways. Thus, it could be argued that the sheer size of the companies meant that the work involved in engineering was simply beyond the scope of one engineer.

This said, only six of the 23 railway companies were over 100 miles long, leaving 15 railways that were short in length but with multiple engineers engaged on them. The total length of these 15 railways was 679.58 miles (16.15%). Subsequently, these companies were the best candidates for being railways where the involvement of one of the engineering luminaries was for the purposes of attracting investors. Lastly, in only five cases, all of which involved Stephenson, was there any hint of him taking an ‘ornamental’ position as he adopted the title of ‘Consulting Engineer.’

Thus, there seems to be three tiers of these engineers’ involvement in the companies. Firstly, there were those companies where they had sole control, and while they may have been originally appointed for ‘ornamental’ reasons to attract investors, they had practical responsibilities. Secondly, there were cases where they did share control of engineering within a company with another individual, but the size of the company may have precluded sole control being possible given their other commitments. Indeed, these companies were some of the largest and, therefore, were most unlikely to have appointed them for ornamental reasons as the companies didn’t need that type of support to gain investment. Lastly, there were a handful of companies where they were most likely appointed for ornamental reasons because they shared the engineering title within small railway companies that possibly didn’t need two engineers. Therefore, the proportion of engineering appointments of these three engineers that were purely ornamental was seemingly small.

I also want to talk about the ‘military’ aspect of management. One of the principal claims by railway historians has been that ex-military officers were brought in to manage the early railways as they were some of the few individuals who had experience at administering large bodies of men. As stated in the last blog, the the 130 in the sample had 322 management posts. These were held by 226 individuals. If I am to believe Bonavia’s assessment of the senior management within the early railways, military men should feature prominently among the senior managers, especially in the administrative positions.

Unfortunately for Bonavia the evidence doesn’t support his argument. In the 1848 sample only 8 of the 226 (3.54%) men involved in managing Britain’s railways were listed as having a military title. Of these, seven were ex-army captains and one had been a member of the Royal Navy. Of the eight, three, Jee, McClean and Moorsom, were engineers; four, Badham, Hartnoll, O’Brien and Charlewood, were secretaries; and one, Mark Huish, was ‘manager.’ Of course, there may have been more military men within the 226 listed managers that didn’t cite their military titles, so there may have been more that I am missing. Furthermore, there may have been more ex-military men employed further down in the companies’ hierarchies that were not shown as the directory covered only senior managers. Yet, on this information alone it could be tentatively said that, amongst the senior managers of Britain’s railways in 1848, the number of military men was smaller far than Bonavia supposed. In reality I have been a bit bold with this statement. But, hopefully, the level of involvement by ex-military men may become clearer when I look at the other railway official’s directories from 1841 and 1847.

Unlocking the Early Railway Manager (The Turnip Rail Project) - Part 2 - Three Engineers

So this is the first part of my ‘Turnip Rail Project’ to actually feature research. I have had one of my friends describe it as a ‘research Time Team.’ If last weeks’ Time Team is anything to go by I certainly hope not; they found very little. For those who didn’t read my previous blog post, this is a project that I will present as I go that will determine the nature of the early British railway company managers. I will, therefore, include all my preliminary thoughts, mistakes and ideas. Primarily I will focus on the railway manager in the 1840s using three ‘railway officials’ directories from 1841, 1847 and 1848. If you want a bit more background, have a look at my last blog post here.

Anyway, in my time off over the last few days, away from my PhD and work, I have been ploughing through and processing the information contained in the 1848 directory of railway company officials. Yes, I am really that wild. I have also been watching Deadwood at the same time, so at least I can say that I have been doing something enjoyable (although Deadwood is pretty grim). Despite this distraction it has been a laborious task. But, the fruits at the end were most interesting.

I chose to start on the 1848 directory simply because it contained more information than the other two, and would reflect the state of British railway administration at a time when railways were in their ‘teenage’ years. In total I have collected data from 130 individual railways that were listed in the directory. For each, I have catalogued the number of officials in each railway, the number of posts listed, the names of the individuals and their positions. I have also noted the mileage of each railway, and in total the 130 railways operated 7117.55 miles of line in 1848. Originally I had calculated that there were 45,000 miles, but it is a wonder what a missing decimal point can do to my calculations.

Firstly, I will look at the sample of the managers’ post holdings. In total, 130 railways had 322 senior managerial posts according to the directory. Of these, 178 (55.28%) post were engineering roles (Engineer, Consulting Engineer, Assistant Engineer, Resident Engineer). Of course, I didn’t think straight at first, and for a very short while fell into the trap of thinking that this was 178 individual engineers. However, after playing around with Excel, I revised the stats. There were in fact 92 individuals, taking 177 positions on 123 railways. This meant that for some unknown reason 7 railways did not employ an engineer or did not list one. This may need a bit of looking into.

What is interesting is that while many Engineers only took assignments with one company, possibly indicating local relationships with the railway builders, personal connections with directors and individuals coming in from other industries to try their hand at railway building, a good number served multiple concerns. Three of the individuals on the list are names that have gone down in railway history. In 1848 Robert Stephenson (shown) was serving 26 railway companies, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Locke were both working with 13.

It is unlikely that they were directly involved all the time, and it is clear that on many of the companies that they worked on they received help. For example, Robert Stephenson was co-engineer with William Baker on the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stour Valley Railway, as well as J.E. Errington on the Lancaster and Carslisle Railway. Stephenson was also co-engineer on the London and North Western Railway with Joseph Locke. Lastly, Isambard Kingdom Brunel had a staggering seven Assistant Engineers on the Wiltshire, Somerset and Weymouth Railway. However, this was a unique example. In the majority of cases railways had only one or two engineers. Furthermore, the two engineers occasionally took the separate roles of ‘Resident Engineer,’ who was employed by the company, and ‘Consulting Engineer,’ who was called in when required. However, I admit that this was the arrangement on the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) and it may have been different elsewhere.

Going back to the ‘big 3 engineers,’ (Brunel, Locke and Stephenson) I feel that the evidence does suggest that railway engineering in this country in 1848 was controlled by them. 51 of Britain’s railways had the 3 individuals involved. Simply based on the number of companies in existence, this put 28.81% of companies under their ultimate or shared engineering control. Yet, the engineers served many of the largest railway companies at the time, such as the London and North Western Railway, the London and South Western Railway, the Great Western Railway, the Midland Railway, the Eastern Counties Railway, the South Eastern Railway, the South Wales Railway and the York, Newcastle and Berwick. Thus, if mileage is taken into account, the three engineers were heading up engineering activities on 4208.85 miles of Britain’s railways, or 59.13%. Quite simply, this is a staggering amount of influence on the emergent railway industry.

Of course my brain is now buzzing with ideas about the influences that these relationships had on technology, more specifically the development of broad verses narrow gauge railways. After all, it wouldn’t be hard for the narrow gauge ideas of Locke and Stephenson, who engineered 3186.76 miles of Britain’s railways between them (44.77%) in 1848, to dominate when Brunel, who favoured broad gauge, only engineered 1022.08 miles (14.36%).

Yet, this isn't the overall purpose of the project. Hopefully in my next blog I’ll detail some of the findings and thinkings about the rest of the individuals in the survey. I'd be very interested to know whether the other engineers that weren't working with the luminaries had any links to them and what their backgrounds were. Also what about the other individuals listed? They were predominantly secretaries and their backgrounds were may be hard to get at. Also in the sample there were few managerial titles that we see in later railways such as 'Locomotive Superintendent' or 'Traffic Manager' and it'd be interesting to see if there was a correlation between the size of the railway and where these titles appear in the directory...anyway, I'll leave my musings for another time.

Pleas keep using the hash-tag - #TurnipRailProject - if you tweet about it!