Difference between revisions of "John George Robinson"
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Revision as of 13:39, 26 November 2014
John George Robinson (c1856-1943), chief mechanical engineer of the Great Central Railway
c1860. Born the son of Matthew Robinson
1875 He was entrusted with looking after the work in England, for the Building of the Huelva Pier.[1]
1943 Obituary [2]
THE death of Mr. John George Robinson, which occurred at the advanced age of eighty-seven, on December 7th, will be widely regretted in railway circles. He was, it will be recalled, the chief mechanical engineer of the Great Central Railway Company from 1902 until 1923.
He came of a railway family, and his father, the late Matthew Robinson, was the divisional locomotive, carriage, and wagon superintendent of the Great Western Railway.
He was educated at Chester and served his apprenticeship at the Great Western works at Swindon. Later he gained railway experience in Ireland, where he was the locomotive, carriage, and wagon superintendent of the Waterford, Limerick, and Western Railway.
In July, 1900, Mr. Robinson was appointed locomotive superintendent of the Great Central Railway.
In 1902 he took charge of the carriage and wagon department and was made chief mechanical engineer. He designed several new classes of locomotives for Great Central service, most of which we described in THE ENGINEER. An early engine was the single-driver express locomotive with a Belpaire firebox. His six-coupled express engine and the three-cylinder compound engine with bogie and tender attracted the attention of the late Charles Rous-Marten, who will be remembered as a popular writer on railway runs. Rous-Marten's articles on "Great Central Compound Engines and their Work" appeared in our issues of April 24th and May 1st, 1908.
Other locomotives designed by Mr. Robinson, which we described and illustrated, included the six-coupled express engine "Sir Sam Fay," the express 4-6-0 goods engine "Glenalmond," and the six-coupled large tank engine with Robinson superheater. The four-cylinder express passenger engine "Lord Faringdon" was another noteworthy superheater locomotive, while one of the last Robinson engines was the four-coupled superheater passenger engine of 1922.
In 1919 and 1920 Mr. Robinson conducted some important experiments on the uses of pulverised and colloidal fuels in locomotive boilers.
He laid out the company's new carriage and wagon works at Dukinfield, and was responsible for enlarging and modernising the locomotive works at Gorton.
He was concerned with the special three-cylinder high-pressure eight-coupled tank shunting locomotives, the first of their kind, which were built for pushing loaded trains over the humps at the shunting and marshalling yards at Wath, near Doncaster.
During the last war Mr. Robinson was a member of the Railway War Manufacturers' Sub-Committee, and, in addition to supervising war production at the company's works, he designed a 2-8-0 tender engine with a Robinson superheater for service in France.
His superheater design gained for him a Diploma for Grand Prix at the Latin-British Exhibition, and he also designed a successful lubricator for locomotive and marine engine use.
His services to the nation were recognised when he was awarded the C.B.E., and for many years Mr. Robinson was a well-known member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.