Joseph Locke Read online

  Although Brassey and Mackenzie were the main contractors, and brought their own navvies, local men were also employed. It seems a similar system prevailed to the one used in Britain, where gangers were in charge of the men and collected money from the contractors to pay them. That at least was the theory. One of the French gangers, Lamour, collected the money from Mackenzie and then absconded. Next day the men appeared asking for their wages and were sent packing empty handed. As far as the Mackenzies were concerned, they had paid as agreed and had no intention of paying twice. The third day after the ganger had vanished with the cash, Locke appeared on site with Brassey and discussed the work with Edward Mackenzie, and complained about the quality of the masonry. The party was then supposed to be moving on to the next site, but Lamour’s men managed to grab hold of Edward and held on to him for two and a half hours, until a troop of Dragoons turned up to rescue him. Now the law stepped in. The magistrates decided that Mackenzie had indeed met his legal obligation, but in order to keep the peace the men should be paid. Edward was highly disgusted: ‘They said this is French law – the people are masters not the magistrates. We had to pay the men 7120 francs – this sum is now to be paid twice.’

  History soon repeated itself. Edward had his suspicions about a Belgian ganger called Delmier: ‘Returned along the line, paid the Belgian and asked the men if they were satisfied he would pay them. They all said they were. I gave him the money and left them.’ The men were wrong. This time, not only were Locke and Brassey again at the works when the trouble broke out, but they had the Minister of Public Works with them as well. But the presence of that august gentleman did nothing to improve the situation: the men were paid in full and Delmier was never seen again.

  The line to Rouen had been opened on 3 May 1843, with the usual ceremonials, presided over by two Dukes, in the course of which Locke had been awarded the highly prestigious Legion d’Honneur. It meant that work could now begin on the far more difficult route to Le Havre. The first difficulty to overcome was the crossing of the Seine at Rouen with an eight-arched bridge, which, like the bridges on the earlier line, would be a wooden superstructure of eight arches carried on stone piers. There were five tunnels with a total length of 5,500 yards. There were deep cuttings and tall embankments, and a steep drop down to the coast that Locke planned as a line with a gradient of 1 in 110. He was examined before a French committee, whose own engineers declared that the steepest allowable gradient would be 1 in 100. It is a mark of Locke’s persuasive powers that the eventual compromise was close to his original estimate – 1 in 125.

  The most imposing of all the structures was a viaduct near the town of Barentin, about 12 miles from Rouen. Here it had to cross a valley with a stream at the bottom that powered a number of mills, and a main road. It had 27 arches, each 50 feet span and rising to a maximum height of 100 feet. The foundations were of solid masonry where they could be fixed on solid chalk: elsewhere and by the river, they rested on pilings. The arches themselves were built of bricks, fired on site. The work was almost complete in January 1846 when disaster struck. Devey, in his biography of Locke, gives a vivid account of exactly what happened:

  About six o’clock in the morning, as a lad was leading a team of horses up the hill to proceed with the ballasting, he heard bricks falling from the fifth arch on the Rouen side. In a few seconds the arch collapsed; the neighbouring arches followed right and left, rushing to earth with tremendous uproar, until, in two minutes, the whole viaduct fell in, shaking the hills around as if they had been convulsed by a violent earthquake. The mills in the valley were shattered to pieces, though two or three men buried in the rubble managed to crawl out unhurt.

  Devey gives one version of what had gone wrong. He wrote that the disaster had been caused by laying heavy ballast on the top of the viaduct before the mortar had completely set and the arches had been stabilised. He claimed that the Resident Engineer had warned this could happen, and it had been planned to remove the ballast that day. Mackenzie tells a different story in his diary entries:

  12 January Mr Illidge informed me on Saturday last Barentin Viaduct fell to the ground a heap of ruins – fault – Bad Mortar. We told Mr Locke mortar was bad and proposed to use Hydraulic for mortar and bear half the expense of the extra. He said he would allow nothing, but we were at liberty to use it if we pleased. The result is now to be seen.

  This would be characteristic of Locke’s attitude. A price had been agreed and the price was to be kept, but without knowing the original specifications it is difficult to see who is to blame. Mackenzie continues the story:

  13 January Today I met Locke with Mr Brassey. He looked sad and was low in spirit. Afterwards went to Newman’s office where I found him engaged in making a plan for reconstructing Barentin viaduct and instead of building as before hollow piers opening with 4 chimneys 2’ 6 “ square is now to be solid and the piers instead of brick arches they propose timber ones.

  According to Devey the French press ‘Set up a howl’ blaming their government for employing the British and the British for wretched workmanship. Brassey confounded the critics. With no fuss whatsoever, he announced that he would be rebuilding the viaduct at his own expense. He had undertaken to complete the work and maintain it for twelve months and he would abide by the terms of his contract. It was a huge expense for Brassey, but an enormous boost to his reputation for scrupulous honesty that was to stand him in good stead for the remainder of his career.

  Mackenzie and Brassey now began to worry about the other viaduct at Malaunay. Once there they discovered ‘some very ugly cracks in the piers that is a little alarming.’ They had the piers strengthened and declared themselves satisfied. The French, however, were taking no chances. Before they allowed passenger trains across they first loaded 3,000 tons of earth on top and left it there for several days. Still worried about safety, they brought out a goods train with heavily loaded wagons and ran that backwards and forward a few times. Only when no further cracks appeared did they finally decide it was acceptable.

  Brassey completed the building of the Barentin viaduct at a total cost of £20,000, but he did get some relief. He was awarded the £10,000 premium that had been promised by the Company if the line was finished ahead of time. The Rouen & Havre section was officially opened to the public on 22 March 1847. Apart from the usual celebrations, the directors marked the occasion by handing out 12,000 francs to be distributed among the poor in the regions through which the railway passed. At the celebratory dinner, at which Locke was thanked and praised, the engineer did make the point that it could all have been finished a great deal quicker without the tests insisted on by the French engineers. It seems less than gracious, given the justifiable nervousness following the disastrous collapse at Barentin. Even if engineers could have been satisfied, it was probably intended as much to appease the public, as it was to be an actual scientific experiment.

  The opening did not mark the end of Locke’s involvement with the lines. In his Presidential address he wrote:

  I found too that France had then only two or three places where a small number of locomotives engines had ever been made, the rest being obtained from England: and all these at that time, were of a very inferior description. Knowing that the railway system there was then just starting and that France could not, and ought not, to remain without the means of repairing and consequently, of constructing its own engines, I at once determined on the establishing workshops at Rouen: by which that Company at least might be able to rely on resources entirely under its own control.

  The works, known as Les Chartreux after a nearby monastery, were established at Sotteville, near Rouen, and Locke brought William Buddicom over from England to run the works, with his partner William Allcard. The three men had all followed similar paths: Allcard had, like Locke, worked under George Stephenson on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. The two new men had formed their own company, Allcard, Buddicom & Co. Inevitably, Buddicom drew heavily on his experience at Crewe when designin
g locomotives for the French railways. There were two types of locomotive produced in the early years: a 2-2-2 for express passenger trains and a 2-4-0 for goods. One of the engines built there in the early days has survived and is now on show at the Cité du Train Museum at Mulhouse in France. The locomotive, St. Pierre, is remarkably similar to the Crewe engines. This is one of the 2-2-2 passenger locomotives with 5ft 7½in drive wheels and angled outside cylinders set within a double frame. It has the Allan valve gear as well. It was built between 1843 and 1845 and proved a remarkably successful engine that remained in service right up to 1916 – at the start of the twentieth century it had covered over 800,000 miles in service. It is no wonder that Locke, in his review of French railways, expressed his pleasure at what Buddicom had achieved:

  The success of this experiment has been complete, both to the company and to Mr. Buddicom, who still continues his labours, and in a much wider field, for he now supplies engines and carriages to most of the companies in France, and I think I may add, that no company, even at the present day, possesses a matériel better adapted for railway service, than that which has emanated from the workshops at Rouen.

  So what we think of as the Crewe-type locomotive became known in France as Le Buddicom. Locke’s success in France in engineering an important part of the country’s new transport system and establishing a major engineering works for locomotives and rolling stock is still remembered in that country. In 1951 a statue of Locke, copied from an original designed by Louis Dubec for Barnsley in 1866, was erected in Barentin in the shadow of the famous – or infamous - viaduct. Locke now left France to face new challenges at home.

  Chapter Ten

  RAILS NORTH

  One of the problems of writing a neat, chronological biography of any engineer is that projects usually overlap instead of following each other in neat succession. The engineer is unlikely to be working on just one line at a time, and this was certainly true of Locke. There was a brief mention in the last chapter of negotiations about French railways taking place in Scotland, where he was Chief Engineer for the Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock Railway. It is now time to backtrack and look at that line in more detail.

  The story really begins with the history of the Clyde. Today, we think of it as a mighty river, famous for its ship-building industry, which saw the launch of such celebrated vessels as the Queen Mary. Yet at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the river in Glasgow was so shallow that many of its citizens used to ride across on horseback rather than pay the toll to use the bridge. Improvements were put in place in the latter part of that century, but it was still impossible for sea-going vessels to reach Glasgow itself. This led to Greenock’s development as the main port near the mouth of the river, from where everything had to be transhipped into smaller river craft. There was an attempt to improve matters by the construction of the Glasgow, Paisley & Ardrossan Canal, authorised in 1806. It never even got much beyond Paisley, before work was abandoned. At the start of the railway age, there was a plan to extend the canal by means of a railway, but this would have been very much on the older pattern, involving a great deal of haulage by stationary engines. There were also a number of tramways connecting to the river, mostly built to a 4ft 6in gauge, and for a time it seemed possible that that would become the standard gauge for Scotland, but wiser councils prevailed, and it was agreed to match the lines already well advanced south of the border. As the development of Greenock moved forward, the need for a better connection to Glasgow became ever more pressing.

  Two companies were formed: the Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock and the Glasgow, Paisley & Ardrossan. It was at once obvious that Parliament was highly unlikely to authorise two parallel routes, linking the same places, so agreement was reached that the line between Glasgow and Paisley should be built and operated jointly. From Paisley, the line to Ardrossan swung off in a wide arc to the south, while the other line took a more northerly route. Once agreement had been reached the Acts for the two lines were approved, and it was agreed that to make construction simpler, the incomplete canal to Paisley could be filled in. It must rank as one of Britain’s least successful and shortest-lived canals. Locke was appointed as Chief Engineer for the line to Greenock and his Resident Engineer was to be the man he had first met while working in Stockport, and who had worked with him on the Grand Junction, John Errington. Born at Hull in 1806, Errington had trained as a surveyor for civil engineering works in Ireland, before moving back to Britain. His work on the Grand Junction had begun in the comparatively lowly position of assistant surveyor, but when Locke took over the whole line he became the Resident Engineer. In 1840 Locke took him into partnership.

  As this was a joint enterprise, Locke only took direct responsibility for the first seven miles. The first part of the route presented few difficulties. One of the first problems was bringing the line into Paisley itself, on a multi-arched viaduct, followed by the crossing of the White Cart at Paisley. The Ardrossan line had a ready-made start, adapting the original canal aqueduct, but Locke had to design a new bridge. He decided to build it entirely from stone and to build it to last. The foundations were 8 feet below the stream bed, and the 85-foot single span rose to a height of 54 feet. It was a colossal undertaking that required over 3,000 tons of stone. In order to bring the huge stone blocks from the quarry to the site, Locke arranged for the construction of a temporary railway. The trucks lumbering up to the viaduct site with their massive loads were described by one imaginative local as being like ‘a huge land-turtle creeping up a hill with a sheep on its back.’ The viaduct was later widened.

  Beyond Paisley was the greatest obstacle to progress, a high ridge that lay right across the line at Bishopton. Here deep cuttings had to be carved through hard rock at each side of the ridge, joined by a pair of tunnels, 330 and 352 yards long, thrust out from either side of a huge 65-foot deep shaft. As usual, Locke put the major works out to tender to experienced contractors. Thomas Brassey got work at the Glasgow end, but the Bishopton contract went to William Mackenzie, who put in a final bid at £88,264 - £20,000 lower than Brassey’s bid. He was soon to discover that Brassey’s estimate was rather more realistic. The work was to prove far more difficult than anyone had expected. Mackenzie himself was busy on many contracts, including those in France, and called on his brother Edward to take over much of the work.

  It was not just the terrain that provided problems. In March 1839 he found a subcontractor had been beaten up by his own men, while a month later he arrived at Bishopton before breakfast and discovered all the miners were blind drunk. In his own words: ‘I took the work out of their hands, they were very impudent.’ One can imagine that ‘very impudent’ hardly describes what a drunken miner might have said to him.

  Every effort was made to finish the work on time. Mackenzie brought in a thousand men at one time and set them working day and night. He had to pay them extra, but they weren’t satisfied with the rates of pay, and when a rock fall killed one of the workers, a large proportion of the workforce simply packed their belongings and left. It was, said Locke, ‘ruinous to the contractors.’ Life could have been made easier if more shafts could have been dug for the tunnel, but the local landowner, Lord Blantyre, refused permission. As it was, the workings were a scene of endless activity and blasting was a regular event, every day for hours on end, each shot preceded by a blast on a bugle to warn people to keep clear. ‘The twanging of horns. The grating noise of the iron borers and the heavy and incessant explosions stunning the ear on all sides like the roar of artillery.’ The author of those words added that visiting the site was like entering a war zone.

  Physical problems were not the only thing that caused difficulties for the Mackenzie brothers. Relations with Locke seem to have been good, but they had far more trouble with Errington. In the summer of 1839 Locke toured the works and declared himself satisfied, but when Errington appeared shortly afterwards, ‘he complained of everything he saw, nothing was right.’ And as the contractors were pushing on as rapidl
y as possible, Errington was not always being helpful:

  Errington called and went down on the Engine – he pressed the Engine on to Paisley which prevented me from sending out about 50 Waggons, I wish the Directors would keep a special Train and Engine for such like Men. I suffer much from such Mens greatness, his carcase being carried on it seems is of more importance [than] 50 Waggons of Stone going out of the cutting.

  Locke reported back to the directors and explained to them that the delays in completing the work were not down to incompetence or lack of effort by the contractors who had done all that was humanly possible. That did not, however, help when it came to costing the work. When the cuttings were measured to assess the work involved, Errington’s estimates fell far short of Mackenzie’s, who claimed to have lost something like £10,000. The Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock may have been a comparatively short line, but it was one beset with difficulties. For Mackenzie, trying to balance his life with his other interests both at home and abroad, it often seemed like a nightmare. It was he declared a ‘hot shop. If purgatory is to be compared with it, I’ll try and avoid it.’ For Locke, it marked the start of a far longer association with Scotland.

  The opening of the new lines made visiting Scotland very much easier than it had been in the past. Travellers from London could go by train all the way to Liverpool after which they could get a steamer to Ardrossan, a 14-hour journey, and continue to Glasgow by train. This does not seem particularly speedy to us, but it was far better than any stage-coach journey could have been, and even the Railway Times considered it almost ideal. ‘What more could any reasonable man want? If he were to travel the whole way by rail at 20 miles an hour, he could but arrive two or three hours earlier, before breakfast was ready or anyone up to bid him welcome.’ However, by 1840, the opening of the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway now meant that there was a direct route from London as far north as Lancaster. At some time there was going to be a connecting rail link between England and Scotland, and this provided an opportunity to make that connection along the west coast. But it was not the only contender: there was another line to the north from London, completed that year, this time joining the capital to York. It offered the possibility of an east coast line to Edinburgh. No one, at the time, felt that two routes to Scotland were necessary; one should be quite sufficient.