William Adams (1823–1904) was:
- Locomotive Superintendent of the North London Railway from 1858 to 1873
- Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Eastern Railway from 1873 until 1878
- Locomotive Superintendent of the London and South Western Railway from then until his retirement in 1895.
He is best known for his locomotives featuring the Adams Bogie, a device with lateral centering springs (initially made of rubber) to improve high-speed stability. He should not be mistaken for William Bridges Adams (1797-1872), a locomotive engineer who invented the Adams Axle — a radial axle box used on locomotives of William Adams's design.
1823 May 15th. Born in Mill Place, Limehouse, London, where his father (John Samuel Adams?) was resident engineer of the East and West India Docks Company.
After private schooling in Margate, Kent he was apprenticed to his father's works. The railway surveyor Charles Vignoles had previously worked on the construction of the London dock basins and this association then secured a position for Adams as an assistant in his drawing office. The final years of apprenticeship were spent at the Blackwall works of Miller and Ravenhill, builders of engines for steamships.
In 1848 Adams became assistant works manager for Philip Taylor, an ironfounder, millwright and former assistant to Marc Brunel, who had set up workshops in Marseilles and Genoa to build and install marine engines. Fluent in French and Italian, Adams soon found himself effectively the superintendent engineer for the Royal Sardinian Navy, although still nominally working for Taylor. (The Kingdom of Sardinia then encompassed Genoa and much of what is now north-west Italy.) In 1852 he married Isabella Park, the daughter of another English millwright working in Genoa, and returned to England.
On his return to England, Adams initially worked as a surveyor: considering possible routes for a railway on the Isle of Wight, overseeing construction work at Cardiff Docks and planning and equipping new workshops at Bow for the East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway, soon to change its name to the North London Railway. This led to his appointment as the company's locomotive engineer in 1854, a post he held for eighteen years. Here he introduced his noted series of 4-4-0 tank engines, the first to utilise the laterally-sprung bogie, and the first continuous train brake.
1859 Locomotive Superintendent of the North London Railway. Joined I Mech E[1]
1860 Resigned from I Mech E
1861 William Adams, civil engineer and locomotive superintendent, age 37, living Limehouse with his wife Isabella age 31, son William J Adams 7, Katherine A Adams 6, Isabella Adams 4, Charles Adams 2, John H Adams age 6 months[2]
1866 William Adams, Locomotive Superintendent, North London Railway, Bow, London. Rejoined I Mech E[3]
1869 became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was also a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and was a Past President of the Society of Engineers.[4]
In 1873 Adams took up a similar position with the nearby Great Eastern Railway. There he did not well appreciate the different requirements of the line, a far-flung concern compared with the North London, and his locomotive designs for the company were found to be underpowered for main-line work. However his refitting of the company's Stratford Works using modern, standardised equipment saved a great deal of money and, when he left for the London and South Western Railway in 1878, his reputation was intact.
On the LSWR he designed and built 524 locomotives, supervised the expansion of Nine Elms Works and the transfer of the Carriage and Wagon Works to Eastleigh. Failing health forced his retirement on 1895-05-29. He lived in Putney until his death on 1904-08-07.
1904 Obituary [5]
WILLIAM ADAMS died at his residence, Hillrise, Putney, on the 7th August, 1904, at the advanced age of 81 years, having seen 40 years' continuous service in the locomotive departments of the North London, the Great Eastern, and the London and South Western Railways.
Born on the 15th October, 1823, he was apprenticed at the age of 17 to Miller and Ravenhill, marine engineers in London.
Subsequently he entered the service of Philip Taylor and Co at Marseilles, by whom he was employed for three years on the erection of marine engines and machinery, and in 1848 he joined the Sardinian Navy as an engineer, serving four years afloat.
Returning to this country in 1853, he was engaged by Mr. H. Martin as an assistant on various works until 1855. It was in the latter year that his long connection with locomotive engineering commenced on his being appointed to the position of Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Superintendent of the North London Railway. While holding that post he introduced many improvements in the rolling stock under his charge, and organized and extended the workshops at Bow.
In 1873 he accepted a similar appointment with the Great Eastern Railway, with which Company he remained five years, reconstructing to a large extent the Stratford works and developing the rolling stock on the lines of his former experience, particularly in regard to the requirements of suburban traffic.
In 1878 he joined the staff of the London and South Western Railway as Locomotive Engineer, and continued in this position for seventeen years, retiring in 1895. Under his superintendence the Nine Elms Works were rebuilt and enlarged, and considerable improvements were effected in the rolling stock. Modern locomotive practice is indebted to Mr. Adams for many improvements introduced or effected by him during the course of a long and useful career.
The subject of this notice was a man of quiet and unassuming character, considerate to those under him, whose respect and esteem he enjoyed. He extended a ready support to any social and philanthropic schemes which came under his notice. especially those which promised to benefit railway servants. While at Bow he was largely instrumental in founding the Bow and Bromley Institute.
He was a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of the Society of Engineers, of which he became President in 1870.
In 1895 he contributed to the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in collaboration with W. F. Pettigrew, a valuable description of 'Trials of an Express Locomotive,' carried out by them on the South Western Railway. For this Paper the Authors were each awarded a George Stephenson medal and a Telford premium.
Mr. Adams was elected a Member of the Institution on the 6th April, 1869.
See Also
Sources of Information
[1] Wikipedia