Thomas William Worsdell
Thomas William Worsdell (1838-1916), Locomotive superintendent for the Great Eastern Railway, later of the North Eastern Railway.
1838 January 14th. Born at 17 Laurel Street, Liverpool, the eldest son of Nathaniel Worsdell
c.1855 apprenticed to the Birmingham engineering works of his uncle Thomas Worsdell (1818–1893), another of Thomas Clarke Worsdell's sons.
1861 Became manager of the works
1864 Thomas William Worsdell, Engineer, Berkley Street, Birmingham.[1]
1865 Fell out with his uncle and emigrated to the United States soon after his marriage, on 29 June, to Mary Ann Batt (1844–1918).
Worked on the Pennsylvania railroad until 1871 when he returned to England as works manager under Francis William Webb at the London and North Western Railway's Crewe works.
c.1881 Appointed locomotive superintendent of the Great Eastern Railway
c.1885 Appointed locomotive superintendent of the North Eastern Railway at Gateshead.
A strong advocate of compound cylinder locomotives, six of the fifteen classes he designed for the NER were of this type.
Messrs. Worsdell, von Borries, and Lapage patented improvements in compound locomotives.
1890 resigned due to ill health and was succeeded by his brother Wilson. He joined the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1864, serving as a member of council in 1886–92.
1916 June 28th Died at Arnside in Westmorland
1916 Obituary [2]
THOMAS WILLIAM WORSDELL was born in Liverpool on 14th January 1838.
His father was at that time superintendent of the "Coaching" Department of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and remained with that Company, and its successive amalgamations into the final London and North Western Railway, for 52 years.
After early schooling in Liverpool and Crewe, Thomas W. Worsdell went to Ackworth School for five years, and subsequently to Queenwood College in Hampshire.
On leaving there he went into the railway carriage works at Crewe, principally in the timber yard department, but soon left to be apprenticed to an uncle in Birmingham, who was in business as an engineer and machine maker. Before completing his apprenticeship he was appointed a foreman in the shops at the age of twenty.
The long hours and extra work caused his health to give way, and, after a serious illness, he was engaged at Crewe in the drawing-office of the Locomotive Department under the late Mr. John Ramsbottom. About two years afterwards he undertook the sole management of an engineering works in Birmingham for five years, but, the firm not keeping to their agreement, he left in 1865 for the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he was soon appointed Master Mechanic, having charge of their principal works at Altoona, Pa., and the construction of engines, cars, machinery, etc., and several iron bridges. He remained with that Company for 61 years.
In 1871 he was appointed the manager of Crewe Works, and held that position for ten years, during which time very large extensions were made to the works. The Railway Company built all their locomotives and machinery, and had large steelworks which produced the castings, forgings, and, for a time, rails.
Mr. Worsdell was Justice of the Peace and a Member of the Crewe Local Board, being Chairman in 1875, when the disposal of the town sewage was re-arranged, and after the incorporation of the town was Chairman of Committees.
In the beginning of 1881 he was appointed Locomotive Superintendent and Mechanical Engineer of the Great Eastern Railway; during his time great extensions of works and lines took place, and here lie designed and built 20 large compound passenger engines.
In 1885 he accepted the post of Locomotive, Carriage, and Wagon Superintendent to the North Eastern Railway, and early in that year took charge of that department, remaining until the end of 1890, when failing health caused him to retire; but lie was requested to continue as their consulting engineer for the mechanical departments.
In the beginning of 1893 he retired, and, apart from some occasional consulting work, gave up further activities.
His death took place at his residence at Arnside, Carnforth, on 28th June 1916, at the age of seventy-eight.
He was a Member of this Institution during 1864 and 1865, and was re-elected in 1874; he served as a Member of Council from 1886 to 1892. He resigned his Membership in December 1915. He was also a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
1916 Obituary by A. R. Bennett.[3]
With the passing of forth, on June 28th, in his 79th year - the world loses an amiable as well as an upright and talented man. My acquaintance with him dated from the year before the Edinburgh International Exhibition of 1890, and the occasion was the decision of the Engineering Committee of that Exhibition to instal an extensive display of locomotives, both ancient and modern, in a special annex or pavilion, and, more particularly, should it prove practicable, to show the express engines of the six Companies operating the three different routes between London and Edinburgh. I was delegated by my colleagues on the Committee to interview the various railways on the subject, and my first meeting was with Mr. T. W. Worsdell at Gateshead. It was both cordial and successful, for, on learning the scope of the Exhibition and the Committee’s desire to illustrate the rival routes, Mr. Worsdell expressed his willingness to assist and after some conversation promised, his Directors being agreeable, to send one of his bogie single-driver two-cylinder compound expresses, an East Coast saloon and George Stephenson’s “Locomotion,” Stockton and Darlington No. I.
In due time this splendid exhibit came to Edinburgh under the charge of Mr. Wilson Worsdell, and placed on the same track as Mr. P. Stirling’s outside-cylinder 8-foot single Great Northern express. No. 776, attracted great attention and admiration during the six months’ run of show. It was a subject of remark that Mr. Worsdell’s years in the United States as master mechanic at Altoona Works of the Pennsylvania Railway had not the effect of converting him to American ideas, except as regards the bogie (if that can properly be said to be American) and the cab, which was certainly of Transatlantic type and extremely handsome and commodious. All the rest of the engine was characteristically British. At the close of the Exhibition - which had been held in commemoration of the opening of the Forth Bridge—Mr. Worsdell had an idea of filling his saloon with friends and running it, drawn by his engine, over the Forth Bridge to Perth, but the proposal, as well as another to try the engine with the standard trains over the Waverley route to Carlisle, was not welcomed by the North British Railway. Those who know the Waverley route will not, I think, fail to admire Mr. Worsdell’s confidence in his single-driver engine.
Apart from helping materially to popularise the bogie on the North-Eastern Railway’s big main line engines, Mr. T. W. Worsdell’s chief work, in conjunction with Mr. von Borries, of Hanover, was undoubtedly as a pioneer in the compounding of locomotives, a principle in which he thoroughly believed. It is worthy of note that although compounding was not persisted in on the Great Eastern and North-Eastern Railways long after his retirement, yet the same system continued to find favour in Germany, where to a large extent it became standard, acceptance and employment at home on lines..... (much more about von Borries)