Thomas Banks and Co

Thomas Banks & Company of Ancoats, Manchester

Business

• 1832 Advert: 'By His Majesty's Royal Letters Patent.BANKS'S IMPROVED PATENT VALVE STEAM ENGINES— THOMAS BANKS and COMPANY, Patentees, recommend their Improved PATENT STEAM to manufacturers and others, where power is wanted to turn any kind of machinery. For durability, and the small space they occupy, they will be found worthy the attention of the Public — For particulars apply at No. 64, Church-street, Manchester; at the Manufactory, Bengal-street, Jersey-street, Great Ancoats'-street— N.B. The patent valve can be fixed to any steam engine already at work — Millwrights' work executed on the best terms.'

• 1837 Pigot & Co's Directory gives their address as 57 Bengal Street

• 1841 Listed as 1841 Patent valve steam engine manufacturers, millwrights, &c., 57 Bengal Street. Banks's house: 23 Union Street, Great Ancoats Street.

• 1845 'NOTICE is hereby given, that the partnership between JAMES FLETCHER and THOMAS BANKS, in the trades and business of steam engine makers and millwrights, and in vending and manufacturing certain improvements in steam engines, carried on at Manchester, in the county of Lancaster, under the partnership of "Thomas Banks and Co.," (the said partnership being partnership at will,) was DETERMINED and DISSOLVED on the 4th day November, the said James Fletcher having previously given due notice to the said Thomas Banks my intention to determine and dissolve the same.—Dated this 5th day November, 1842. JAMES FLETCHER.' Was this James Fletcher (1806-1881)?

Steam Engines

1829 Thomas Banks of Patricroft was granted a patent for two improvements to steam engines: the first related to the lubrication of the piston by introducing lubricant through the hollow piston rod; the second related to the steam admission valve, which was a ported cylinder arranged to partially rotate, on the principle of the two-way cock, to direct steam from the boiler to the cylinder or from the cylinder to exhaust.

The following information is taken from 'British Steam Locomotive Builders' by James W Lowe:-

• 1833 Tendered unsuccessfully for the supply of a stationary engine for the Swannington Incline on the Leicester and Swannington Railway.

• 1835 Sold a locomotive to the London and Southampton Railway for construction work. Unserviceable by 1839

• 1835 Supplied a small stationary engine for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway's Crown Street tunnel for pumping water for the new boilers at Edge Hill for the Lime Street tunnel engines, and for hauling coal wagons up the tunnel to Crown Street.

• 1839 Two 0-4-2 locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, numbered 61 and 63. No. 63 was rebuilt in 1841, and became Grand Junction Railway No. 119.

• 1840 Two locomotives, Nos. 16 and 17, for the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway.

Lowe says that it is possible that the firm were only agents for the supply of locomotives, but that was only conjecture.

Railway Wheel Patent

US Patent No. 2761A was granted on August 25, 1842 to a Thomas Banks of Manchester for a railway wheel ('car wheel'), having a steel or iron tyre inserted in a peripheral groove in the iron wheel..

In 1843 Banks was visited by a 'Rail-road Director of Massachusetts' (Elias Hasket Derby), who wrote 'I ride to the manufactory of Mr. Thomas Banks, No. 57, Bengal street, and examine his improved tire for locomotives. His plan is, to cut a groove two inches and a quarter wide at the surface, a little wider at the base, and half an inch deep aroun the rim of the wheel, and insert in the groove a band, composed of several bars of steel, the upper side of which is convex, and the lower concave. These bars are introduced at a white heat, and hammered until they fit the groove. wheels thus fitted, have run a hundred thousand miles without any sensible deterioration.

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