The Bristol and Exeter Railway ''Fairfield'' was an experimental broad gauge self-propelled steam carriage. In later use the carriage portion was removed and it was used as a small shunting locomotive.

Fairfield

The steam carriage was built to the design of

William Bridges Adams William Bridges Adams (1797 – 23 July 1872) was an English author, inventor and locomotive engineer. He is best known for his patented Adams axle – a successful radial axle design in use on railways in Britain until the end of steam trac ...

at Fairfield Works in

Bow, London Bow () is an area of East London within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is primarily a built-up and mostly residential area and is east of Charing Cross. It was in the traditional county of Middlesex but became part of the County of ...

. It was tested on the

West London Railway The West London Railway was conceived to link the London and Birmingham Railway and the Great Western Railway with the Kensington Basin of the Kensington Canal, enabling access to and from London docks for the carriage of goods. It opened in 184 ...

late in 1848, although it was early in 1850 before modifications had been made that allowed Adams to demonstrate that it was working to the agreed standards. The design was not perpetuated by the

Bristol and Exeter Railway The Bristol & Exeter Railway (B&ER) was an English railway company formed to connect Bristol and Exeter. It was built on the broad gauge and its engineer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It opened in stages between 1841 and 1844. It was allied with ...

, instead they purchased small 2-2-2T locomotives for working their branch lines. It worked on the

Clevedon Clevedon (, ) is an English seaside town and civil parish in the unitary authority of North Somerset, part of the ceremonial county of Somerset. It recorded a parish population of 21,281 in the United Kingdom Census 2011, estimated at 21,442 i ...

and Tiverton branches, although it might have spent some time on the Weston branch too. The power unit had a single pair of

driving wheel On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotive's pistons (or turbine, in the case of a steam turbine locomotive). On a conventional, non-articulated locomotive, the driving wheels are all coupled ...

s driven through a

jackshaft A jackshaft, also called a ''countershaft'', is a common mechanical design component used to transfer or synchronize rotational force in a machine. A jackshaft is often just a short stub with supporting bearings on the ends and two pulleys, gear ...

by small cylinders, the steam produced in a vertical

boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, centr ...

. The boiler was not covered by a cab or other bodywork; the two pairs of carrying wheels were beneath the carriage portion. It had seats for 16 first class and 32 second class passengers. It was once timed as running at . It was numbered 29 in the Bristol and Exeter Railway locomotive list but generally referred to as "the ''Fairfield'' locomotive". Adams built another couple of steam railmotors at around the same time, but the concept did not catch on. It was revived around the turn of the century and the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

built up a fleet of around 100

bogie A bogie ( ) (in some senses called a truck in North American English) is a chassis or framework that carries a wheelset, attached to a vehicle—a modular subassembly of wheels and axles. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transp ...

rail motors A railcar (not to be confused with a railway car) is a self-propelled railway vehicle designed to transport passengers. The term "railcar" is usually used in reference to a train consisting of a single coach (carriage, car), with a driv ...

. These were developed into an

autotrain The Autotrain was a type of passenger train used in the early 20th century, where the steam locomotive could be remotely controlled from the rear of the train. This meant that the engine would not have to run-around at the end of a journey bef ...

system whereby the driver of a locomotive could control the train from a cab in the carriage, the forerunner of today's the familiar

multiple unit A multiple-unit train or simply multiple unit (MU) is a self-propelled train composed of one or more carriages joined together, which when coupled to another multiple unit can be controlled by a single driver, with multiple-unit train contr ...

trains.

Shunting locomotive

The carriage portion was removed in 1851 and the power unit rebuilt, presumably with a new pair of carrying wheels making it an 0-2-2. Its use for the next few years is unclear, although it might have been moved to

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

to pump water. It was sold to Messrs Hutchinson and Ritson in 1856, the engineering contractors who were working on the

Somerset Central Railway The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, also known as the S&D, SDJR or S&DJR, was an English railway line connecting Bath (in north-east Somerset) and Bournemouth (now in south-east Dorset but then in Hampshire), with a branch from Evercree ...

. Before delivery, the Bristol and Exeter Railway had to rebuild it as an 0-4-0. The price agreed was £600, paid in prepared

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...

References

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External links

The GWR Steam Railmotor Project
{{BER Locomotives Broad gauge (7 feet) railway locomotives 0-4-0 locomotives Railmotors Bristol and Exeter Railway locomotives British steam railcars Scrapped locomotives

Fairfield

Shunting locomotive

See also

References

External links