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Connor 2-2-2

From: Ian Thompson <Ian.Thompson~at~ges.gla.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:19:41 +0000
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

For some reason my attachment appears to have become detached from the message which I am now repeating.
From detailed inquiries it seems almost certain that the attached locomotive was the type that hauled Verne's train in 1859 to Scotland. It would be attached to the Caledonian Railway Company's carriages (arrived from Liverpool) at Carlisle. The locomotive is Benjamin Connor's famous design with a 2-2-2 wheel arrangement in which the single driving wheels were 8 feet 2 inches! Verne commented in Backwards to Britain on the speed of the train and this is not surprising given the size of the driving wheel. He also commented however that he considered British trains to be unsafe. This again is unsurprising since the carriages were "loose coupled" i.e. there was no braking system other than on the locomotive itself and on downhill gradients the train would be unstable unless speed was reduced.
This type of locomotive was introduced at the start of 1859 and although one cannot be entirely certain, it is very likely that this new locomotive would have been used on the Caledonian Company's most prestigious route, the Anglo-Scottish expresses between Carlisle and Glasgow and Edinburgh. There are no survivors of this type but there is a good model in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Incidentally, comparing Verne's account in Backwards to Britain with the 1859 time table, his train arrived on time in Edinburgh...something not often achieved today!
Ian Thompson
Received on Tue 29 Jan 2008 - 12:34:43 IST

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