Joseph Locke

by Anthony Burto

  Buddicom was to be joined by another new recruit, Alexander Allan, who had previously worked for the Vauxhall foundry in Liverpool. Together they set about looking at ways to solve the most urgent problem on Locke’s shopping list: broken and cracked crank axles.

  As Locke had reported at the time, the great majority of the engines in use on the Grand Junction in the early days had come from the Stephenson works. Locomotive design had come a long way since the days of Rocket and its immediate successors. The need for bigger engines meant that it was necessary to support the extra weight, by adding a third trailing axle to give a 2-2-2 configuration. By the early 1840s the predominant models of this type were the Patentees, engines that also had improved valve gear. They were undoubtedly very fine machines, but they did still have the internal cylinders. Buddicom and Allan decided that the only way to remedy the problem of repairs was to change the Patentees, by rearranging the drive mechanism by placing the cylinders outside the frame. This removed the need for cranked axles, as the piston could be attached directly through connecting rods to cranks on the two drive wheels. The success of the scheme encouraged Locke to begin the work of designing locomotives to be built at Crewe.

  Locke was certainly heavily involved in the design of the first locomotives from the works. He had already shown his enthusiasm for design as early as 1832, when he had produced plans for a new type of boiler, which had actually been approved by the Stephensons and was said to be better then anything seen before. The new engines became known as the ‘Crewe types’. In order to maintain the rigidity and strength of the sandwich frames used by Stephenson, an extra frame was added and the cylinders placed between them. As the new engine began to take shape, Buddicom left Crewe for France, a move that will be described later, and his place was taken by Francis Trevithick, son of the locomotive pioneer. One locomotive of the Crewe type has survived, built at the works in 1845. It was named Columbine and has been preserved at the National Railway Museum in York. There were to be other differences introduced, including a slight modification of the Stephenson valve gear devised by Allan. It was the start of a highly successful engine construction business.

  One of the secrets of their success was that they did not indulge in tinkering with successful designs. Locke, in his report of 1839, wrote of ‘the folly and expense of perpetually altering the engines for the sake of some trifling gain.’ By not making too many alterations it became a simple matter to standardise parts. This seems obvious now, but it seems was not generally practiced. Trevithick later wrote, ‘I lately found an engine standing idle for the want of a valve to the pump, a small piece of brass not more than 3lb. in weight, and although there are ten engines of the same class on the line (with two pumps to each engines), there was not one duplicate valve on the establishment.’ All that was changed, and Crewe engines developed a high reputation for reliability.

  Crewe was a vital addition to the Grand Junction and its later associated lines, a fact that was obvious by the grand celebrations that marked its official opening in December 1843. There was a grand dinner, with all the usual speeches and toasts, including one specifically thanking Locke for his work in making it all possible. It was followed by a ball:

  Although there might be at times upwards of 1,500 persons present, there was ample space for all throughout the whole evening. Several Directors and their families joined in the merry dance; and the Highland bagpipes finished off with The Campbells are Coming and played in front of the assemblage when they retired. While the dance was going on the villagers and neighbours were entertained with a splendid exhibition of fireworks, provided at the expense of the Railway Company. Altogether this was a joyful day.

  While Crewe was being developed as a major centre for construction and repair, Locke was soon having to turn his attention to matters further from home.

  Chapter Nine

  RAILWAYS IN FRANCE

  There had been a modest beginning to railway construction in France. The first route between St Etienne and Andrézieux was opened in 1823 for freight only and was followed by the line from St Etienne to Lyons, France’s first passenger line. It was for this route that Seguin designed his multi-tubular boiler locomotive at much the same time as Robert Stephenson introduced a similar type in Rocket. But then nothing much happened for some time, apart from a couple of short lines opened between Paris and Versailles and St Germain.

  The construction of the London & Southampton Railway brought out new plans for a cross-channel link from the rapidly developing port of Southampton. The optimistically named London & Paris Railway was actively promoted by British investors and Charles Vignoles was invited to survey a possible route. The obvious route for the shortest sea crossing to France was to Calais and across to Dover, but not to Southampton: that was ruled out. An alternative from Paris to Dieppe with a branch to Rouen was proposed for France instead. The survey was carried out in 1833 and the French Minister of Public Institutions, Monsieur Thiers, visited England to see for himself the effect of railways in that country. Far from being enthralled, he was aghast, regarded railways as monstrosities and declared he would never allow any further construction in France. Not everyone shared his views and the banker Charles Lafitte was particularly horrified at the Minister’s failure to understand the economic consequences of not creating a rail network. He was equally scornful of other sections of society who stood in the way of the transport revolution, railing against ‘the dearth of capital, the mistrust of the inhabitants, the charlatanism of speculators.’

  Lafitte decided to try and move the situation forward and recruited an English entrepreneur, Edward Blount, who was well qualified for the task. Born in 1809, he began his working life in banking, but by 1829 he had moved into the world of diplomacy, as attaché to Lord Granville at the Paris Embassy, where he made many valuable connections including the future Napoleon III. He then decided that diplomacy was not the life for him, and as he had a private income was able to dabble in journalism, becoming a regular correspondent for the world’s first railway newspaper The Railway Chronicle. With good connections, railway knowledge and enthusiasm he at once accepted the invitation to form a company, Lafitte, Blount & Cie, to promote railway construction in France.

  They approached the London & Southampton Railway to gain their support for a new line to Le Havre. This was so obviously in the former’s interest that they promptly backed the proposal that now had to go to the French government. It was equally obvious that the man for the post of Chief Engineer would be Joseph Locke. We are fortunate in having a very full account of Locke’s involvement in the project as he made it the subject of his inaugural address when he was appointed President of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the entire speech was printed in the Institution’s reports for 1857-8. As Locke remarked at the beginning of the speech, there was not much point in talking about railway engineering in Britain, a subject with which most of the audience would have been very familiar, but he thought they might be interested in knowing how things were done in France.

  The main difference was the government involvement in the whole process. The ideas were submitted to the Administration of the Ponts et Chaussées department who decide which routes were appropriate ‘for the public utility’. Once plans had been approved they were handed to the Minister of Public Works, who then passed on the information to the local communes along the proposed route: ‘the Mayor announces, by an advertisement on the doors of the Marie and by a beat of drum, that the plans have been received; and that they are ready for inspection by any parties whose land may be affected.’ Any objections were considered and dealt with and then the process of land purchase began, negotiating prices by mutual agreement. After that the land became the property of the Company for a fixed length of time.

  Locke approved the French system, particularly the fact that the system only allowed lines that were shown to be essential improvements on anything already in place. It removed the Parliamentary battles that were a feature of the
British system, and which led to ‘the encouragement of a rivalry that leads to contention and unprofitable works.’ It also avoided the rivalries between different companies that had ‘duplicated, nay trebled, both lines and stations.’ He ended this part of his speech by noting: ‘the railway interest in France has not, as in England, been made a victim of public exigencies and private cupidity.’

  Locke was duly appointed as Chief Engineer in France. It was decided that work should be limited at first to the Paris-Rouen line, as the engineering would be far simpler than on the extension to Le Havre. In his report on the line he wrote:

  The country is only slightly irregular; the embankments will be light. The heaviest works will be three tunnels and four bridges. The longest tunnel will be a mile and a half in length, but it will be through an excellent material, for the soil is chalk. The bridges will not cost more than £15,000 each. They will be made of wood, with a span of about 100 feet, and have four arches. The French are peculiar for making works of this kind last as long as iron.

  He hoped to finish the whole line at a very reasonable price of around £20,000 a mile, by using cheap French labour. ‘When I became Engineer to the Paris and Rouen Railway, I of course very soon turned my attention to the means which that country offered for enabling me to construct and maintain my works.’ He soon discovered that the country offered very little. Contractors put in extravagant estimates, which were totally unrealistic. He turned instead to the contractors that he trusted the most: Thomas Brassey and William Mackenzie. At first they put in separate bids, but then agreed to combine their forces and take the whole contract. Mackenzie noted in his diary in July 1840 that he and his wife had met with Mr and Mrs Locke to talk about the Rouen Railway during work on the Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock line – one of the first indications that Phoebe joined her husband on his travels. It all sounds very good natured, but friendship did not stop Locke striking a hard bargain when it came to contracts. He made his estimates of costs with scrupulous care and was seldom prepared to bargain, as Mackenzie found out at another meeting in Scotland that December. Locke proposed a price of £40 a yard for the work but Mackenzie had asked for £42. Mackenzie then suggested a compromise at £41 but Locke was having none of it, so reluctantly Mackenzie agreed to the lower price. Brassey was annoyed and felt that Mackenzie had given in too easily.

  If Locke was unhappy with French contractors, he was equally disappointed with the French workers, who had no experience of navvying, nor even of the tools and equipment regularly in use in Britain. He explained the situation when Mackenzie and Brassey arrived in France, bringing their army of navvies with them:

  Among the appliances carried by these gentlemen, there were none more striking or important then the navvies themselves. Following in the wake of their masters, when it was known that they had contracted for works in France, these men soon spread over Normandy, where they became objects of interest to the community, not only by the peculiarity of their dress, but by their uncouth size, habits, and manners; which formed so marked a contrast with those of the peasantry of that country. These men were generally employed in the most difficult and laborious work, and by that means earned larger wages than the rest of the men. Discarding the wooden shovels and basket-sized barrows of the Frenchmen, they used the tools which modern art had suggested, and which none but the most expert and robust could wield.

  The navvies at work were admired as Locke recorded in his address:

  I think as fine a spectacle as any man could witness, who is accustomed to look at work, is to see a cutting in full operation, with about twenty wagons being filled, every man at his post and every man with his shirt open, working in the heat of the day, the gangers looking about, and everything going like clockwork. Such an exhibition of physical power attracted many French gentlemen, and looking at these English workmen with astonishment, said, ‘Mon Dieu! Les Anglais. Comme ils travaillent.’ Another thing that called forth remark, was the complete silence that prevailed amongst the men. It was a fine sight to see the Englishmen that were there, with their muscular arms and hands hairy and brown.

  The British navvies were noted for their prowess. It was estimated that in filling wagons a good navvy’s work was the equivalent of lifting 20 tons of spoil to a height of six feet in a day’s work. The French who started at the work could not match this and, as a result, they received generally two and a half francs a day and the British twice as much. As the pay received by the French was far more than they had managed to earn in their earlier life as farm labourers and the like, they were quite happy at first: they respected the British for their expertise and the local shopkeepers were equally content:

  The abundance of five-franc pieces, on the Saturday, at all the shops and places of trade, soon made the distributors of them popular; and it was a remarkable fact, well known at the time, that in tunnelling, or other dangerous work, the French labourers could not be induced to join unless an Englishman was at the head of the operations.

  The consequences of the Saturday spending sprees were predictable: the ‘places of trade’ were generally trading in only one commodity. The men had not, said Locke, lost their ‘lawless and dangerous’ habits – habits that soon brought out the local gendarmes, ‘who, however, soon discovered that it was better to humour for a time rather than attempt to control them.’ The navvies may have been hard drinkers, but one reason for their fitness and strength was, Locke said, due to the better diet they enjoyed: ‘beef and bacon’ was better than the French ‘coarse bread and an apple’. It is also understandable that the French wanted the reassurance of experienced men on hand in the tunnels. The work was described as unpleasant and frightening. The air was bad, the men were often soaked to the skin and the noise in the tunnels was not reassuring. ‘At times you hear alarming creaking noises round you, the earth threatening to cave in and overwhelm the labourers.’

  The British and French were not the only ones at work on site. Arthur Helps, in his book Life and Labours of Mr. Brassey, 1872, gives a vivid account of this polyglot community:

  But among the navvies there grew up a language which could hardly be said to be either French or English; and which, in fact, must have resembled that strange compound (Pigeon English) which is spoken at Hong Kong by the Chinese …This composite language had its own forms and grammar; and it seems to have been made use of in other countries besides France; for afterwards there were young Savoyards who became quite skilled in the use of this particular language, and who were employed as cheap interpreters between the sub-contractors and the native workmen …on this railway between Paris and Rouen there were no fewer than eleven languages spoken on the works. The British spoke English; the Irish, Erse; the Highlanders, Gaelic; and the Welshmen, Welsh. Then there were French, Germans, Belgians, Dutch, Piedmontese, Spaniards, and Poles – all speaking their own language. There was only one Portuguese.

  When the common language failed, the British had their own basic means of communication: ‘They pointed to the earth to be moved, or the wagon to be filled, used the word ‘d-n’ emphatically, stamped their feet, and somehow or other instructions, thus conveyed, were generally comprehended by the foreigner.’

  We are fortunate in having accounts of the work from both the main contractors, and from William Mackenzie’s brother Edward we have details of the day-to-day activities on the Le Havre and Rouen lines. What becomes clear is the close, if not always amicable, relationship between the engineer and the contractors. For his part, Locke was a great believer in being the man on the spot. This was in contrast to the French engineers, who tended to stay at their desks and leave it to assistants to stomp around in the cold and the damp. Locke disapproved:

  The experienced eye, on such occasions, sees more than any pen can describe – and elicits, by enquiries and inspections, much that would never occur from the perusal of a statement in writing…On paper it is highly methodical and imposing – copious documents; all is minutely recorded, and cross referenced … Bu
t this will hardly be deemed an efficient substitute for the less formal, but more direct process, by which the engineer is thrown into constant personal relation to the realities with which he has to deal, attacking them, as we have said, with the full weight of his own proper energies; doing nothing of importance at second- or third-hand, but directly grappling with all that is material to the success of his undertaking.

  Locke could not escape the French system altogether. The Ponts et Chaussées appointed their own engineer to look over the works, and directors were also liable to appear on the scene. They received little encouragement: ‘I have found it necessary to resist undue encroachment.’

  Relations between Mackenzie and Locke were not always cordial. All the early descriptions of Locke seem to suggest a very cheerful, good-humoured personality. Mackenzie, in his diary entries, often presents a rather different aspect of the man. An entry for 31 October 1842 finds the two at Poissy: ‘we made little progress. Mr. Locke was all day in a very tyrannical humour and took the most unjust views of all matters that came under his view. We did not settle any one thing.’ The following year on another visit to Poissy – ‘Locke in an infernal cross humour’ and the following year, when trying to settle accounts – ‘gave another example of his tyranny and petulance.’ However, none of these spats seem to have prevented the two men socialising. In the same month of 1843, when Mackenzie recorded the ‘cross humour’, he dined with Locke and his wife at the Café du Paris. It was on this occasion that Locke gave the first intimation that he was looking for outlets for his talents outside the world of engineering. He mentioned that he would like to become a Scottish Member of Parliament, though he seems to have made little effort in that direction.