Thomas the Tank Engine, whose story proved the impossible that even the small and weak can do big and strong things, is only one of the many famous locomotives in the saga of rail transportation. As late as the 18th century, trains were pulled by horses instead of steam engines, which did not exist around this time. English inventor Thomas Newcomen created the world's first pumping engine, used to extract water from mines. Of it's conception he noted: "I had not walked further than the Golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind." With the rise of the Industrial Revolution from 1760 to 1840, the introduction of the Bessemer process allowed steel to be made inexpensively, building long lasting steel rails through rampant diseases and unpredictable conditions of nature.
The world was harsh, but the rails were getting longer. Stocks, mail and passengers from different sides of Britain and America were increasing. By the late 1860s, rail travel had greatly improved to meet these needs with the development of the first high pressure steam locomotive Catch me who can built by Richard Trevithick in 1808. While shipbuilders aimed for comfort, style and speed to take less time in transatlantic crossings, a Northumberland engineer named George Stephenson formed the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. Pioneer promoter William James, arraigned and surveyed the route along with Stephenson's son Robert and iron founder William Losh with one main stipulation: they would hold a contest to see which type of engines would prove useful to work on the line, partly organized by the board of directors. Five innovative steam locomotives competed for the new railway and Stephenson's Rocket was the last to enter and he completed the Rainhill Trials on October 8th, 1829.
Trains and ocean liners were built for a new type of passenger who could afford them. In their world, a woman could be seen at a formal dinner party in a $1,000 diamond necklace and elegant meals were served entirely onboard yachts and special carriages called buffet cars. The nouveau riche found it's style during the Victorian era, a name given by historians and authors describing the culture and society of Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901. The western and eastern worlds were secure, prosperous and industrialized in the years following the American Revolution and the Crimean War known as Pax Britannica or in America, "the Gilded Age". Poverty was still everywhere, but the middle class enjoyed leisure time while the upper class began to flaunt their wealth. The great minds of science, stories, technology, geology, politics and business, including Charles Darwin, Rudyard Kipling, James Joseph Sylvester, Jefferson Davis, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Grenville Dodge and even Oakes Ames accelerated the industrial beat of progress over the gentle rhythms of nature to see results that are larger than life...and very few of them thought about the consequences.
During the reign of Queen Victoria and her son King Edward VII, bigger certainly is better in the world of commerce between shipbuilders and rail construction. The increasing trade of immigration aboard ships also allowed train carriages to accommodate third class, the modest working second class and the thrill seeking first class to their selected ships in docks and harbour ports known as boat trains. On July 27, 1846, an Act of Parliament amalgamated five railway companies into the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, it's first locomotives drawn from a collection by superintendent John Chester Craven who built up the necessary facilities for the new railway to allow the company in building their own line of locomotives at Brighton Works. Their first constructed class of locomotive was a 2-2-2 called Jenny Lind after the Swedish soprano singer. 24 tons in total would reach a speed of 43 mph crossing the railway route within an hour or two, leaving it's chief rival companies, the London and South Western Railway and the South Eastern and Chatham Railway up for the challenge.
Even after the death of King Edward in 1910, not everything had been optimistic in the industrial race of the twentieth century. A year after his death in 1911, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy waged war on what would be the first aerial bombardment by airplanes and airships known as the Italo-Turkish War. That same year, the White Star Line built RMS Titanic, a huge ocean liner that struck a North Atlantic iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912 and sunk with great loss of life. While Titanic's story was widely published in American and British newspapers, the Balkan states were impressed at the Italians' efforts to defeat the supposedly weak Ottomans, creating nationalism within the Balkan League and setting off another war against the Ottomans. For the second time, the Ottoman Empire suffered a great defeat.
One man with no fear of progress was Sir Topham Hatt I, an apprentice at Swindon Works. The Tidmouth, Knapford and Elsbridge Light Railway on the Island of Sodor had caught his eye. He started a second job as an engineer on that railway under the employment recommendation of A. W. Dry & Co and made attractive offers to the two other railway lines that were losing money. His amalgamation with the Wellsworth and Suddery Railway route grew to become the Tidmouth, Wellsworth, and Suddery Railway. Topham's desire to run a railway line focused on connecting the island with the nearby Furness Railway, at the time run by Frederic James Ramsden. In December 1908, he inherited the position of managing director from his father, the late Sir James Ramsden, whose honor in the field of civil engineering had been erected in a bronze statue of himself in Barrow-in-Furness. The trains and ships of the FR continued serving under the Union Jack, but now Topham's idea for a major railway on Sodor rested heavily in the front of his mind.
The Furness Railway had flourished in business with the new Barrow Central Railway station in 1882. Fourteen years after the opening, W. F. Pettigrew, then superintendent of the railway and it's subsidiaries, built the "K2" class of locomotives to supersede the similar K1 class for heavier trains on the Cambrian Coast Line. The influence of the Furness Railway on transportation by ships and association with the sea earned the K2 it's nickname "Larger Seagull". The first of these engines, #22 was named Edward, and he was the first engine to have Sir Topham Hatt as his driver for a mere thousand pounds.
In 1870, the Great Northern Railway amazed the world of rail transportation with a revolutionary locomotive, the Stirling Single. At 30 tons, it's large driving wheel could drive them up the main line in less than an hour at a speed of 50 mph. In the 1895 Race to the North, #1 of this class named Emily held the record as the world's fastest locomotive for three years until the creation of the C1 Atlantic engines by Henry Ivatt. Pullman coaches introduced in 1867 featured the luxuries and elegance of ocean travel and the great European hotels, complete with a beautiful interior, a piano, dining services and plush lounges built by master craftsmen. The GNR now had the fastest locomotives and the next step in size and luxury would have to be something more spectacular in the next thirty years.
While the other English railways had positioned themselves for speed, the LBSCR hoped to make progress with newer locomotives for the coming 1910s. Over a pleasant evening, L. B. Billinton, taking over as locomotive engineer from D. Earle Marsh, conceived three new locomotive classes. He envisioned some of these with the Stephenson and Walschaerts valve gears, which had been used to modify his earlier locomotives. At a certain tonnage and speed, these engines marked a new era for the company than anything he had ever built. These three engines are called the E2 class, used for shunting duties, the K class, for mixed-traffic loads and the L class, for heavy express trains of wealthy travelers with comfortable passenger service.
In 1913 after the new engines were envisioned, the dream was set in motion and construction plans were reviewed for the E2 tank engines, the first of the three to be built at Brighton Works. Billinton presented the drawings assisted by leading engineer Vere Awdry and it was stated to began construction on the E2s now and the other two classes later. This signaled an economic boom for Brighton, fast becoming south England's top railway terminus to London.
The designers of the Great Western Railway at the time had pursued a vision of improvement with no expense spared. Chief mechanical engineer George Jackson Churchward was among the many senior managers who proposed several ideas that would make the GWR's passenger express services the most fastest trains on the Holiday Line. By April 21st, as John Brown & Company's construction on the luxurious RMS Aquitania was completed with the typical features of a sweeping grand staircase under a roof of glass and iron, a pair of first class elevators to carry passengers between decks, a swimming pool for fitness and a dining saloon for refreshments, Earle Marsh, chief assistant mechanical engineer of the GNR Atlantic engines, built his own Atlantics for the LBSCR before his retirement and had abandoned the naming of Brighton locomotives before christening the #39 engine "La France" in honor of the French president Armand Fallières during a state visit. Assigned with the passenger trains Southern Belle and Brighton Limited, they were described as the most luxurious trains in the world for speed and design.
The next generation of LBSCR locomotives were obstructed by a motive power shortage from 1905 to 1912. To accommodate the lack of space for Brighton Works to expand, the railway established Lancing Carriage Works for extra repair and construction on locomotives and rolling stock, hiring more railway men in record numbers. Some parts of the main line were electrified for future electric trains, while Herbert Walker arranged a similar ordeal on the LSWR. Meanwhile, architect Alfred T. Fellheimer was in America, overseeing the reconstruction of a larger Grand Central Terminal in New York City for more passenger trains.
In May 1913, railway workers had set the wheels for the very first E2, #100 at Brighton Works. As construction continued, the LBSCR prepared the world with it's three new engine classes by Billinton to replace the outdated E1 goods locos. To evoke the recently discontinued naming of Brighton locomotives, it was Vere Awdry and his three year old son Wilbert who drew the name of #100 from the founding father of locomotives: Thomas, honoring Thomas Newcomen who invented the pumping engine, although Billinton was more impressed with Newcomen's great work and not his positive outlook on life. Thomas was born on May 12, opening his eyes for the first time to a small boy who was no more than three: Wilbert Awdry. His first words were just simply:
"Hello."
After the completion, Thomas' brothers and sisters were already being planned out and final plans called for five new engines of the same class. L. B. Billinton called for some more, but chairman Lord Ponsonby and chief engineer Charles L. Morgan disagreed with this, wanting to give Billinton more time to start work on the K class as well as a different change of pace for the workmen at a slightly higher wage. In the end, four additional E2s 101 to 104 are considered adequate for shunting duties. In fact, it was Thomas' siblings who helped the workload on the railway by 17 percent. But alternate modifications in fixing the engine's flaws are underway.
On May 26, 1913, as Igor Sikorsky was becoming the first pilot to fly a plane with four engines and fixed wings, Thomas was let out of the shed to begin work. Aided by a recently hired driver and fireman, he puffed easily out of his shed and came to a gentle stop after a speed of 12 miles per hour on the main line, staying clear of any trains. While Thomas was prepared for further trials, LBSCR officials celebrated over lunch, accepted his place as a shunter and requested that he'd be driven to Southampton to begin the practice of shunting trucks while construction on the following E2s began to shape.
Unlike the E2, Billinton's next locomotive, the K class, held a new set of revolutionary features and designs for all the engines of the LBSCR. It was the first to have a Belpaire firebox, a square shaped boiler made possible without going against the loading gauge. Alternately, it was fitted with a John G. Robinson-style superheater within the boiler and a Stephenson valve gear. With the boilers fed by hot water injectors, a powerful Weir pump would feed the steam back to the tender where the engine could run on four tons of coal and 3,900 gallons of water. Also, it was the first locomotive by the LBSCR to be fitted with a top feed for the driver to check the water valve. Engineering Magazine called this "a new type of express goods engine" while in the public mind, the K class was just about as good as any other goods engine. Expectations for Thomas ran even lower in his field of work.
The other side of the world was having it's problems with politics. On June 28, 1914, as Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were touring the Bosnian city of Sarajevo in an open car, Gavrilo Princip, cohort of the Serbian nationalist Nedeljko Čabrinović, suddenly fired two shots at a point blank range, fatally wounding them. Both Ferdinand and Sophie were rushed to the nearest medical center to seek help, but died within the hour. The Austro-Hungarian authorities determined that Serbia's protest against the annexation of Herzegovina during the Bosnian crisis of 1908 and the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 had spread an uproar between the two countries. Anti-Serbian riots occurred the very next day, with Serbian property being destroyed, razed or pillaged. Because of this, and subsequent events of political matters known as the July Crisis, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had no other choice but to declare war on Serbia and it's neighboring allies.
To the Royal Armies of Europe, the men serving the United Kingdom are the pride of their nation. The British Army enlisted nearly 400,000 men, with the Royal Sussex Regiment enlisting an approximate number of 20,000 men, some of whom have bent their backs in labor over the Billinton engines at Brighton Works. Although construction and repairs on locomotives and carriages had been obstructed by the war to a degree with Lancing Carriage Works having similar problems, the men and their families all felt a personal attachment to be leaving them behind. The master craftsmen of Brighton and Lancing had no greater satisfaction than to take part in what would be known as "the Great War".
In December 1913, the later four E2 tank engines were completed. They had a curved drop at each end of their platforms, held together by slotted frames and a 170 lb boiler. They had the cylinders of the I2 class, giving out a circular shape commonly seen in a tank engine. The tractive effort of 21,305 lbf would drive their four foot wheels up from 30-42 mph at a total weight of 52 tons. The water capacity could hold up to 1,090 gallons of water, somewhat less than the L and K class locomotives. The cost of building and fully equipping the engines had come to at least £1,000 or 500 pounds sterling, the average cost of a locomotive by their standards. The LBSCR had been looking forward to a new series of E2s with greater improvements in design and sufficient capacity in coal and water.
Two years after their completion in March 1915, Thomas' driver and fireman performed a push-pull train service on the East and West Coastway lines. Thomas himself was faced with the practice of stopping at every station with a 50ft balloon motor coach in the back, himself in the middle and a rake of six coaches in the front, while practicing going backwards and forwards with the motor coach to pick up passengers and then bringing himself back after an hour and twenty three minutes. Satisfied with his performance, the LBSCR officials proclaimed Thomas fit for passenger duties in spare time of shunting trucks. Sir Topham Hatt, who had been visiting Brighton in search of a station pilot, accepted Thomas on behalf of himself and the LBSCR's support for the construction of his first major railway line: the North Western Railway. In just two months, Thomas would be leaving Brighton for the Island of Sodor.
