Agenoria (locomotive)
Early steam locomotive built in 1829 for the Kingswinsford Railway.
Built by the Stourbridge firm Foster, Rastrick and Co, the Agenoria is a pioneering steam locomotive. It made its debut on 2 June 1829, hauling loads along the three-mile Kingswinsford Railway, which connected Black Country mines to a canal basin at Ashwood. Retired from service around 1864, the engine was given to the Science Museum in London in December 1884. Today, it resides at the National Railway Museum in York.
Quick Facts
- Builder
- Foster, Rastrick and Company
- Boiler
- 48 in / 1.22 m × 10 ft / 3.05 m
- Operator
- John Bradley & Co
- Current owner
- National Railway Museum, York
- Disposition
- On static display
Facts from the source article.
Historical background
In 1823 James Foster leased land at Shut End, Kingswinford from J.H.H. Foley to exploit mineral deposits and build an ironworks. Two years later Foster proposed a railway to local land owner John William Ward, the 4th Viscount Dudley and Ward, to transport minerals from both their lands. An agreement to construct a line linking Shut End to a canal basin at Ashwood was signed in 1827 by Foster and Francis Downing, mineral agent of Dudley Estate. The locomotive Agenoria was built by Foster, Rastrick and Company, a partnership between Foster and engineer John Urpeth Rastrick. Its name came from a Roman goddess described as the 'Goddess of Industry'.
Design and construction
The Agenoria locomotive was built at the New Foundry in Stourbridge, a facility located across the River Stour from John Bradley & Co’s Stourbridge Ironworks. John Urpeth Rastrick designed and constructed these works, which were linked to the Stourbridge canal by a tramway. Although Rastrick had considerable experience with steam engines and railway engineering, his only prior locomotive was the Catch Me Who Can, a design by Richard Trevithick. An 1890 piece in The Engineer highlighted design parallels between Agenoria and the well-known Puffing Billy from 1813–14. According to an 1884 exhibition catalogue, the locomotive, tender, and water together weighed around 11 long tons. It featured four driving wheels each 4 feet in diameter and two cylinders with an 8.5-inch bore. The cylinders operated through grasshopper beams, an unusual setup that was standard on all of Foster, Rastrick’s locomotives. Agenoria is thought to be the first locomotive to use mechanical lubrication for its axles. Its flued boiler measured 10 feet long and 4 feet in diameter, with a grate housed inside a 29-inch furnace tube that split into two 18-inch flues. An extremely tall chimney, 14 feet high, helped create the necessary draft. The boiler had two safety valves, one of which was out of reach for the enginemen. A distinctive feature is the balance weights in the driving wheels, which double as decorative nameplates. As described in The Engineer of 1890, the upright cylinders worked with half-beams to reduce the piston stroke to the cranks. The cylinders had an 8.5-inch diameter and a 3-foot stroke. A parallel motion was attached to the piston-rod, and the feed pump was driven by one of the half-beams. The fire sat inside a large tubular boiler that branched into two tubes, with the chimney at the boiler’s end. The eccentrics for operating the slides were loose on the axle, using a clutch to allow movement in either direction, and hand gear on the valves enabled the axle to turn half a rotation to engage the correct clutch. Exhaust steam was released into the chimney, though it may not have functioned as a steam blast; the chimney’s great height likely served to generate the required draft. The driving wheels were 4 feet and 3/4 inch in diameter, with coupling rods connecting to the front wheels, which were fitted with springs.
Operation
The Agenoria locomotive began service on a railway that opened June 2, 1829, an event covered by Aris's Birmingham Gazette. The line, built to standard gauge, stretched roughly three miles but included two inclined planes too steep for the engine to handle, limiting its work to about two miles of nearly flat track. On opening day, before a large crowd from the surrounding countryside, the locomotive first pulled eight carriages carrying 360 passengers at 7.5 miles per hour along the level section. It then hauled twenty carriages—twelve loaded with coal and eight with passengers—at 3.5 miles per hour. In a final run, it traveled a mile with only its tender and twenty passengers aboard, reaching 11 miles per hour at half power. Agenoria enjoyed a long career, retiring around 1864. It was stored in an engine shed near an incline leading to Foster's Shut End operations. During a Parliamentary inquiry, Rastrick explained that after loaded wagons descended one incline, the locomotive took them two miles to another incline, which brought them down; the engine ran at 7 or 8 miles per hour, above its rated power, but rarely broke down. A letter from the Dudley Estate's mineral agent to William Orme Foster, James Foster's successor, indicated the locomotive was not running by April 1864, though it was unclear if this was temporary or permanent. Soon after, Foster's agent agreed to supply a new engine as part of a railway upgrade, and a replacement locomotive arrived at John Bradley & Co. in 1865. It is widely believed Agenoria had been discarded by then.
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