SteamIndex

Deeley & Paget
Fowler is examined elsewhere

Robin Barnes Locomotives that never were includes Deeley's compound 2-4-4-2T which never came into existence.

One of the more scholarly of British locomotive designers, Richard Deeley was born according to Marshall in Chester on 24 October 1855 (but according to information received via Internet from searcher through Census information he was born in Derby, was in Alvaston? near Derby in 1861 Census and resident in Chester, recorded 1871 Census). Richard was the son of a Midland Railway accounts specialist. His father had served at one time in the accounts office of the Midland Railway but Richard, spent his' early years at Chester, where he received his grammar school education. In 1873 he became a pupil of B. Ellington, Managing Director of the Hydraulic Engineering Co in Chester. The following year he was selected to go to London to assist in the development of the Brotherhood three-cylinder hydraulic engine, and two years later, while still under 21, he was accepted as a pupil of Johnson, being given experimental work at which he so d!stinguished himself that in March, 1890, at the age of 35, he became chief of the testing department where the foundations of his notable research work and scholarly outlook on life were laid. He retained connections with this department when promoted first of all to the position of Inspector of Boilers, Engines and Machinery in March 1893 where he had a big hand in the design of boilers for Johnson's later engines. On January 1, 1902, he replaced John Lane as Works Manager and exactly a year, later took on the additional post of Electrical Engineer at a combined salary of £1,000 per annum.This followed a trip to America to study electric traction (Locomotive Mag., 1902, 8, 85) In July of the same year he was given a further post, that of Assistant Locomotive Superintendent in preparation for Johnson's retirement at the year end, and on 1 January 1904, he succeeded Johnson at a salary of £2,000 per annum

Deeley made notable contributions to compounding, in particular adapting Smith's system for Midland Railway requirements. Experiments that were not finally concluded until after his retirement,: confirmed that a superheated simple locomotive (Deeley's 999 4-4-0 series) was superior to an unsuperheated compound, but that a superheated compound was more economical than either. Among his other innovations was the introduction of smokebox number plates, much more practical than buffer-beam numbers for a railway that used them as train reporting numbers, and three 0-6-0 locomotives with 6ft driving wheels.

Radford described a Deeley scheme for a 4-6-0 four-cylinder compound engine which Sandham Symes, then Anderson's assistant, sketched out in November, 1907. It was a scaled up version of the 4-4-0 compound except for the introduction of 8óin diameter piston valves for all cylinders, and outside valve gear for the low pressure cylinders. This locomotive might have revolutionised Midland engine policy. The driving wheels were to be 6ft 6lin diameter on a wheelbase of 7ft 3in + 8ft 3in. The leading bogie, centred l1ft 2lin in front of the leading driving wheel had 3ft 3iin diameter wheels on a 6ft 7lin wheelbase, total wheelbase being 30ft !in. The inside high pressure cylinders located above the trailing bogie wheel, were 13in diameter and 2~in stroke at 2ft ctrs, and the outside low pressure cylinders were 21in diameter x 26in stroke at 7ft ctrs, driven by outside valve-gear piston valves centred between the bogie wheels. The boiler set to work at 220psi, had a firebox 9ft 6in long at top of the ring, a 16ft 6in barrel of 4ft 6iin inside diameter on the front rings, the first ring being tapered from 5ft inside diameter. Heating surfaces were tubes 1,804.58sq ft, firebox 165.5sq ft, total 1,970.08sq ft and grate area was 30.lsq ft. Tractive effort was 25,700lb adhesive power 33,688lb. (15.04 tons) with sanding. The boiler was pitched 8ft 8lin above rail level, and height to top of chimney 13ft 3in. Weights were bogie 20 tons 10cwt, leading driver 18 tons 10 cwt, driving 18 tons 10 cwt, trailing 18 tons 10 cwt, totalling an estimated 76 tons in all, the tender weighing a further 42 tons 18cwt 2qtr. being the same as eventually fitted to the Paget locomotive. Total wheelbase was 54ft 8lin and length over buffers 64ft 1in. But Deeleys piece de resistance never was built while Westwood observes that this design for a compound four-cylinder 4-6-0 might well have been a great success and a great asset for the future LMSR, but it was not built; a less-than-holy alliance between the Midland's general superintendent, Paget, and Deeley's chief draughtsman, Anderson, resulted in the 4-6-0 being indefinitely postponed in favour of the unorthodox and unsuccessful locomotive known as the 'Paget Locomotive'. Deeley's resignation in 1909 was probably connected with this situation: excellent note on this in LMS Locomotive Profiles No. 13 page 152 note 16. He received a generous pension, and in his eightieth year published a book on meteorology. Please note that scanning has introduced several errors in dimensions..

Hamilton Ellis (The Midland Railway) adds something to the strange relationship between Deeley, Paget and Fowler: "With the end of 1903, as already recorded, Samuel Johnson retired from the office he had held so constantly for so many years. At the end of his term, he was understudied by Richard M. Deeley. who had been works manager, and was responsible for boilers and electrical equipment. The large boilers on the last Johnson engines were some of his work. Next there came Cecil W. Paget, who was assistant works manager under Deeley, and became acting works manager when Deeley was appointed assistant locomotive superintendent, preparatory to taking over from Johnson. Deeley and Paget had visited America together to study and report on work shop practice in the States. In the background, but only just so, was Henry Fowler, who had been gas engineer and chief of the testing department at Horwich on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, and had joined the Midland in a similar capacity in 1900. In a garrulous moment, Johnson remarked in a railway carnage that his successor was to be, not Deeley, but Paget. The statement got about, and was denied.

On January 1, 1904, Deeley became locomotive superintendent, Paget was made works manager, and Fowler assistant works manager. In spite of their work together. Deeley and Paget were an ill-assorted pair, though both excellent men. To make matters worse, while Deeley was Paget's chief, Paget was a son of Sir Ernest Paget, Bart., chairman of the Midland company, and had wonderful ideas of his own which he intended to put into practice at his earliest convenience. Already people wondered, without speaking, which was really the Sultan and which the Grand Vizier. the background still was Henry Fowler, the Lord in Waiting.

As far as locomotive design went, the change was at first extremely smooth. As we have seen, Deeley had been in very close collaboration with Johnson." He died near London (Isleworth) on 19 June 1944 leaving behind an extensive bibliography (see Atkins, Philip: Richard Mountford Deeley: author and polymath. Midland Rly Rec., (20), 11-12) on non-railway topics (this is not quite correct: a Deeley machine to test lubrication and lubricants was in routine use at Derby: see Archbutt J. Instn Loco Engrs 1921, 11, Paper No. 101), notably tribology (Lubrication and lubricants with Leonard Archbutt, 1912), geology, meteorogy and the Mountford family..

Valve gear

A modified form of Walschaerts valve gear (patent below) was developed by Deeley, and this was to cause Churchward problems as the valve gear initially fitted to the first GWR four-cylinder 4-6-0 appears to have infringed Deeley's design. The Deeley version is described by E.L. Ahrons. Some historical point in the deatils of British locomotive design. Loco. Rly Carr. Wagon Rev., 1910, 16, 14-15.

Papers
Although the following papers mention Deeley's work neither are by Deeley: it would seem highly probable from his extensive literature in books that there must have been papers presented to scientific societies.
Archbutt, Leonard. Water softening and purification by the Archbutt-Deeley process. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1898, 55, 404-54.
Although Deeley is mentioned in the title: he did not appear to share in its authorship.
Peet, W. Gadsby. Mechanical testing of materials at the locomotive works of the Midland Railway, Derby. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1898, 55, 670-95
Included Deeley torsion testing machine.

Patents
18416/1893 Improvements in the purification of sewage, with Leonard Archbutt. Applied 2 October 1893. Published 4 August 1894.
19964/1895 Improvements in chain driving gear applicable to cycles. Applied 23 October 1895. Published 22 August 1896
4645/1905 Improvements relating to the working of compound engines and in regulator valves therefor. Applied 6 March 1905. Published 19 October 1905.
16372/1905 Improvements in valve gear for locomotives or similar coupled steam engines. Applied 11 August 1905. Published 28 June 1906.
4729/1906 Improvements in locomotive superheaters. Applied 27 February 1906. Published 31 January 1907.
5839/1906. Combined spark arrester and ash ejector for locomotive engines. Applied 10 March 1906. Published 7 March 1907
26343/1907 Improvements in regulators or valves for locomotive boilers and for other purposes, with Walter Reuben Preston. Applied 28 November 1907. Published 26 November 1908.
11241/1908 A method of and means for the disposal of ashes from smoke boxes of locomotive and similar boilers, with Walter Reuben Preston. Applied 23 May 1908. Published 25 March 1909.
10561/1909 Improvements in locomotive boiler stays and the like. Applied 4 May 1909. Published 30 September 1909.
12140/1909 Improvements in or connected with the blast pipes of locomotive and similar Boilers, with Walter Reuben Preston. Applied 22 May 1909. Published 23 May 1910.
23872/1909 Improvements in slide valves for motive power engines, with Walter Reuben Preston. Applied 18 October 1909. Published 13 October 1910.
US 1,517,410 Lubricant and friction testing machine. Applied 27 August 1923. Published 2 December 1924.
348,137 Improvements in and relating to loose-leaf ledgers and the like. Applied 4 February 1930. Published 4 May 1931.
351,679 A new or improved machine for testing the wearing qualities of cloth or the like. Applied 21 May 1930. Published 2 July 1931.
473,777 Machine for testing the wearing qualities of woolen and other fabrics. Applied 25 May 1936. Published 20 October 1937.

Other literature

This was extensive and scholarly, and included an article on footplate skills and a major treatise on lubrication.

The economical driving and firing of the locomotive engine. Engineer, 1897. 10 September via Midland Record Issue 30 pp. 30-5.
"sooty and leaky tubes and collectioms of scale result in great waste"

A genealogical history of Montfort-sur-Risle and Deeley of Halesowen. London: Charles Griffin, 1941. xiii, 96pp.
A manual of the principles of meteorology. London: Charles Griffin, 1935. xi, 285pp. Illus., 27 tables.
with Leonard Archbutt: Lubrication and lubricants. a treatise on the theory and practice of lubrication, and on the nature, properties, and testing of lubricants. Fifth edition,. London: C. Griffin. 1927. xxxii. 650pp.

Keith Horne suggests that the weight of the 999 class may have led to Deeley's resignation: see letter Backtack 13 page 453.
Johnston, Howard. Deeley: why did he walk away from the Midland? Steam Wld, 2009, (270) 42-5.
The Midland Railway's relatively young Locomotive Superintendent's resignation.

See: J.B. Radford, Derby Works and Midland Locomotives (1971);
W. A. Tuplin, Midland Steam (1973).
Nock, O.S. Railway enthusuast's encyclopedia
brief obituary Locomotive Mag., 1944, 50, 120.

The Deeley proposed 4-6-0 and the reasons for Deeley's departure from the MR are also covered in: Locomotive might-have-beens. Bob Mills. Backtrack, 2000, 14, 386-390.

Cecil Walter Paget

Cecil Walter Paget was born at Sutton Bonnington, near Loughborough on 19 October 1874 and died at Kings Newton near Derby on 9 December 1936 according to Marshall and Times death notice. Locomotive Mag., 1936, 42, 401 is very brief. He was son of the Midland's Chairman, George Ernest Paget and grandson of one of the original Board members. He was educated at Harrow (see Rudgard below) and Pembroke College, Cambridge (Who Was Who) and was one of Johnson's pupils at Derby. In 1899 he was sent to the Baldwin Works at Schenectady to supervise the construction of a batch of 2-6-0s. On return he was rapidly promoted until appointed Assistant Locomotive Superintendent under Deeley. Locomotive Mag., 1903, 9, 145 states appointed locomotive superintendent following retirement of Johnson! Introduced train control system on Midland. Radford noted that he won the DSO in 1916 and was awarded the CMG in 1918. See also references to WW1 activity in paper by L. Simpson..

Patents
23714/1904 Improvements in locomotives. Applied 2 November 1904. Published 2 November 1905
Cylinder arrangements & valve gear
10992/1905. A new or improved device for indicating the level of liquids. Applied 26 May 1905. Published 31 August 1905.
14488/1905 Improvements in valves for steam and other engines. Applied 13 July 1905. Published 3 May 1906.

Papers
English running-shed practice. Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1910, 79, 825-53.

Paget locomotive
The Paget locomotive was a major attempt to break from the orthodox Stephenson locomotive, and had no lasting results Paget at the time (1907) was works manager of the Derby Shops of the Midland Railway, and his project was built at his own expense It was a 2-6-2 with a firebrick firebox and eight inside cylinders, whose valves were operated by an arrangement of bevel gears, spur gears, and outside fly cranks. Because of the frequent seizure of the valves, tests were curtailed and the design was not developed. The development led to conflict with Deeley.

Radford notes that Paget's locomotive was completed in January, 1909, and made steaming trials soon afterwards. Immediately it struck a problem with differential expansion taking place between the sleeve valves and their liners, which broke in consequence. On one occasion the speed of 82 mile/h is claimed to have been reached, but this was never officially confirmed. It worked several test trains down to London and up to Manchester, and on one occasion it seized up at Syston whilst being drawn clear of the curve upon which it had become stuck and the valve gear had to be disconnected before being dragged away. The cause of the seizure was working the pistons without steam which caused them to crack in several places Locomotive Mag., 1927, 33, 243-4..

M.C. Duffy's The Still engine and railway traction. Trans Newcomen Soc., 1987, 59, 31-53. argues that power house technology as developed by Willans was transferred without success to the Heilmann and Paget locomotives.

On January 1, 1904, Deeley became locomotive superintendent, Paget was made works manager, and Fowler assistant works manager. In spite of their work together. Deeley and Paget were an ill-assorted pair, though both excellent men. To make matters worse, while Deeley was Paget's chief, Paget was a son of Sir Ernest Paget, Bait., chairman of the Midland company, and had wonderful ideas of his own which he intended to put into practice at his earliest convenience. Already people wondered, without speaking, which was really the Sultan and which the Grand Vizier. the background still was Henry Fowler, the Lord in Waiting.

Rudgard (Presidential Address Instn Loco. Engrs) noted "I well remember the remarks of the late Cecil Paget—a locomotive enthusiast at an early age—who was at Harrow School, and who, when the time was available, would go into Watford, and, from a point of vantage on tile bridge near the running Shed, inspect the locomotives in the yard at Watford shed. On his returning to Harrow for a reunion twenty-five years after, Paget's steps took him to the same place and he saw almost exactly the same things as he had seen twenty-five years previously, namely same men, same open-wick torch lamps, same broken windows the only difference was that the locomotives were larger."

See : W. A. Tuplin, Midland Steam (1973).

Other refs

Clayton, James. The 'Paget' locomotive. Rly Gaz., 1945 (2 Nov.)
Leech, Kenneth H. Midland Railway 8-cylinder 2-6-2 No. 2299 with a note on its designer. Rly Gaz., 1945 (2 Nov.)
See also Thompson letter (follows from above)
Nock, O.S. Railway enthusuast's encyclopedia

Paget 2-6-2

Firebox eliminated water walls and replaced by firebricks. Eight cyclinders - near perfect ballance - developed from Willans high speed engines (central valves) for electricity generation. Rotary valves.

Clayton, James. The 'Paget' locomotive. Rly Gaz., 1945 (2 Nov.)

Leech, Kenneth H. Midland Railway 8-cylinder 2-6-2 No. 2299 with a note on its designer. Rly Gaz., 1945 (2 Nov.)

Rutherford gave a useful summary of information about this locomotive, noting that the problems in operation stemmed from the seizure of the valve gear due to differential thermal expansion in the metals, and the breakdown of the lubricants. Backtrack, 11 page 677.

Tuplin, W.A. The steam locomotive. 1974. Chapter 6. Unconventional steam locomotives.
On certain Sundays in the year 1908, observant railway travellers on the Midland Railway between Derby and Leicester might have noticed a large six-coupled locomotive with outside frame and fly-cranks, a Midland chimney but no Midland red paint, evidently making trial trips. The design, building and running of this engine had been effected in the closest practicable secrecy and many years elapsed before even the most meagre admissions were officially made about it.

It was designed by Cecil W. Paget, a Midland Railway operating staff member who had studied mechanical engineering at Cambridge and who had been impressed by the performance of Willans high-speed steam engines driving electrical generators in the power house at Derby Works.

This led him to believe that it would be worthwhile to try, in a steam locomotive, a combination of eight single-acting steam cylinders instead of the conventional two double-acting cylinders. It does not seem ever to have been explained what advantage Paget's cylinders might have offered to offset the replacement of the simplicity of the conventional two-cylinder locomotiye by the complexity of the eight-cylinder layout and its associated mechanism. Single-acting cylinders certainly avoid any need for crosshead and slide bars and on that account each cylinder can be placed much closer to the axle that it drives than is otherwise possible. This permitted 18-in. diameter cylinders to be mounted between outside frame plates in positions that enabled four of them to be lined up with four crank-pins on the middle axle of a 2-6-2 type locomotive. Two other cylinders were associated with cranks on the leading coupled axle and the remaining two applied driving effort to the trailing coupled axle. The layout was ingenious but it might have been hard to find room for eight sets of conventional valve-gear. At all events, Paget used rotary valves on a common central longitudinal axis with a shaft that was rotated by a geared connection with a jackshaft mounted under the footplate and connected to the coupling-rods.

The fire-box was built largely of fire-brick underneath a rearward prolongation of the upper part of the boiler. The 'fire-box heating surface' was therefore small and the water received most of its heat through the walls of the tubes in a short fat cylindrica1 boiler. The large grate (55 sq. ft) was high and would not have been easy to fire at high combustion rates, even though there were two fire-holes.

Partly because unrestrained bronze expands more with heat than does cast iron, the rotary valves of the Paget locomotive were liable to seizure and when this had occurred at high speed the extent of the resultant wreckage was discouraging. Moreover the locomotive remained immovable on a main line for some hours and this led to prohibition of further trial of it on any Midland running line. No further work was done on it and it remained hidden in Derby Works until it was scrapped in 1915.

The boiler had none of the stays that periodically break in conventional boilers, but neither had it the water-wall fire-box that contributes so much to the efficiency of such boilers. It is hard to see what advantage could have been derived from the multiple cylinders; they lacked the total enclosure of cranks and connecting rods that was a feature of the Willans stationary engines that had impressed Paget.

Updated 2018-03-01

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