John Audley Frederick Aspinall

Lived 1851-1937 John Aspinall was born on 25 August 1851, the son of a Liverpool judge (who had become a convert to Roman Catholicism), John Aspinall attended Beaumont College (a Roman Catholic boarding school in Berkshire) and was then apprenticed to Ramsbottom, and later Webb, on the LNWR. In 1872 Webb sent Aspinall to the USA where the younger man was greatly impressed by the larger loading gauge. In 1883, after responsible jobs in Crewe and Inchicore, he became locomotive superintendent of the Great Southern & Western Railway in Ireland. Here he designed a number of capable though undistinguished locomotives, before taking a similar position with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1886. The obituary in The Engineer 1937, 22 January) noted that "No man ever went into Inchicore and came out of it without being the better, and there is never an Inchicore man who does not cherish an affection for it."

He completed the work of his predecessor, Barton Wright in ridding that Company of its unstandardized and ineffective locomotive stock and introducing better, standardized, designs. His radial 2-4-2 tank, which was often used for fast inter-city services, was perhaps his most successful design and was multiplied over the years. This locomotive had a water-scoop operated by a vacuum device (in Ireland, Aspinall had already devised an automatic vacuum brake which was adopted by several lines, including the LNWR and GNR). His inside cylinder 4-4-2 of 1899, of which forty units were built, surprised the engineering world by the size of its boiler, having 2,052 sq. ft of heating surface. Its boiler power, and its 7ft 3in. driving wheels, made it a fast engine and it is said to have exceeded 100 mile/h. One of these engines was fitted with the Aspinall superheater; this, located in the smokebox, was too small to have much effect, and was out-classed by the subsequent Schmidt superheater . He also experimented with cylinder steam jackets.

In 1899 Aspinall became General Manager of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (see Rly Mag., 1899, 5, 17) for contemporary observation of this momentous event, and was a great success, capturing much of the Yorkshire coal traffic, introducing electrification between Liverpool and Southport in 1904, and between Manchester and Bury in 1916. At the outbreak of WW1 he managed to become interned by the Germans, but was released. He received a knighthood in 1917. He became President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He died on 19 January 1937.

• Development of automatic vacuum brake.
• Completion og [[Horwick Works}}
• Developed standardisatiom and large engine policies
• Liverpool-Southport and Manchester-Bury electrification projects