William Bridges Adams
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For William Adams, locomotive superintendent of the London and South Western Railway, see here.
- For William Bridges-Adams, theatrical director, see here.
William Bridges Adams (1797 – July 23, 1872) was an author, inventor and locomotive engineer.
Born in Medeley, Staffordshire, he is best known for his patented Adams Axle — a successful radial axle box design in use on railways in Britain until the end of steam traction in 1968 — and the railway fishplate. His writings, including English Pleasure Carriages (1837) and Roads and Rails (1862) covered all forms of land transport. Later he became a noted writer on political reform, under the pen name Junius Redivivus (Junius reborn); a reference to a political letter writer of the previous century.
Although Adams’s inventions and writings became well-known, the locomotives he produced made little impact. He founded the Fairfield Locomotive Works in Bow, East London, in 1843, where he specialized in light engines, steam railcars and inspection trollies. These were sold in small numbers to railways all over Britain and Ireland, although his most important customer was the Eastern Counties Railway, with its headquarters at nearby Stratford. The business failed some years later, although by this time Adams had expanded his interests to include clothing design and journalism.Confusingly, one of the first railway companies to use his axle-box design widely was the London and South Western Railway where the Locomotive Superintendent, the creator of the Adams Bogie, was also named William Adams. By further coincidence he too had formerly operated a locomotive works in Bow, but this was not a private concern but the depot of the North London Railway. The LSWR locomotives now known as Adams Radials are named for the Locomotive Superintendent, but they are famous for the axle invented by William Bridges Adams.
[edit] References
- Simmons, Jack and Biddle, Gordon (1997).The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, Oxford University Press.
- Wood, H. T. revised Harrington, Ralph (2004). The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.
