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The ''Surprise'' was a nineteenth-century British 
On 10 November 1840, when the
railway locomotive
A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the us ...
. It became notorious after its boiler exploded and killed several crew members during unsuccessful trials in the early days of the Lickey Incline
The Lickey Incline, south of Birmingham, is the steepest sustained main-line railway incline in Great Britain. The climb is a gradient of 1 in 37.7 (2.65% or 26.5‰ or 1.52°) for a continuous distance of two miles (3.2 km). Constructed ...
.
William Church, the ''Surprise''typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...
machine, but also experimented with locomotives. His 0-2-2
An 0-2-2, in the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives by wheel arrangement, is one that has two coupled driving wheels followed by two trailing wheels, with no leading wheels. The configuration was briefly built by Robert St ...
well tank locomotive, exemplified by the ''Surprise,'' featured horizontal outside cylinders at the rear. Dr Church had invented an expanding mandrel
A mandrel, mandril, or arbor is a gently tapered cylinder against which material can be forged or shaped (e.g., a ring mandrel - also called a triblet - used by jewelers to increase the diameter of a wedding ring), or a flanged or tapered or ...
for fixing boiler tubes, and it was the first tank engine to have a multitube boiler. It used piston valves and eccentric motion.
The ''Surprise'' (named ''Victoria'' at the time) began trial runs as a ballast locomotive on the London and Birmingham Railway in January 1838, then transferred to the Grand Junction Railway. Notwithstanding its having reportedly achieved a speed of , it was never particularly successful.
On 10 November 1840, when the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway
The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway (B&GR) was the first name of the railway linking the cities in its name and of the company which pioneered and developed it; the line opened in stages in 1840, using a terminus at Camp Hill in Birmingham. It ...
was looking for engines to work the Lickey Incline, the locomotive, now called ''Surprise'', was brought in, and its boiler exploded at Bromsgrove Station
Bromsgrove railway station serves the town of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, England. It is located at the foot of the two-mile Lickey Incline which ascends at a gradient of 1-in-37.7 towards Barnt Green on the line between Birmingham and Worceste ...
. Both crewmen, Thomas Scaife and John Rutherford, were killed and several people were injured. Their monuments are in Bromsgrove churchyard, though the depiction of a locomotive on the tombstone is of one of the Norris Locomotives.
A new boiler was later fitted and the locomotive was renamed ''Eclipse''. In 1850, it was seen at Camp Hill railway station. By the late 1850s, it had been rebuilt as a six coupled engine on the Swansea Vale Railway
The Swansea Vale Railway (SVR) was a railway line connecting the port of Swansea in South Wales to industries and coalfields along the River Tawe on the northern margin of Swansea, by taking over a tramroad in 1846. It was extended to Brynamman i ...
.
References
{{reflist Early steam locomotives Individual locomotives of Great Britain Railway boiler explosions Railway accidents in 1840