Timothy Hackworth - The Royal George

The Royal George

In 1824, Hackworth occupied a temporary position as a "borrowed man" or relief manager at the Forth Street factory of Robert Stephenson and Company, whilst Robert was away in South America and George was occupied with the surveying of new railways, notably the Liverpool and Manchester. Hackworth only stayed until the end of that year, following which, he returned to Walbottle occupying his time with contract work until, upon the recommendation of George Stephenson, he was appointed on 13 May 1825 to the position of locomotive superintendent of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, a post he was to occupy until May 1840

Hackworth is believed to have been influential in the development of the first Stephenson locomotive intended for the Stockton and Darlington Railway during his time at the Forth Street factory. That locomotive, then named Active, now known as Locomotion No 1, was delivered to the railway just before the opening ceremony on 27 September 1825. Three more of the same type were delivered in the following months and difficulties in getting them into operating order were such as to risk compromising the use of steam locomotives for years to come, had it not been for Hackworth's persistence. This persistence resulted in his developing the first adequate locomotive adapted to the rigours of everyday road service. The outcome was the Royal George of 1827, an early 0-6-0 Locomotive, that among many new key features notably incorporated a correctly aligned steam blastpipe. Hackworth is usually acknowledged as the inventor of this concept. From 1830 onwards the blastpipe was employed by the Stephensons for their updated Rocket and all subsequent new types. Recent letters acquired by the National Railway Museum would appear to confirm Hackworth as the inventor of the device. Since Trevithick's time, it had long been common practice to turn the exhaust steam from the cylinders into the chimney using "eductor pipes" for convenience and noise reduction, and its effect on the fire certainly had been noticed. Whatever the case, Hackworth was probably the first of the very few engineers throughout history to fully take into account the role of the blast in automatically realising the "perfect equilibrium between steam production and usage" in a locomotive when fitted with a firetube boiler, and to consider the blastpipe as a distinct device, paying close attention to its proportions, nozzle size, positioning and precise alignment.