Details
THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GOOCH ARTEFACTS
The Gooch Artefacts offered in this sale not only represent a combination of model and supporting documentation of a quite outstanding and unique nature, but also form a vital part of the contemporary history of the development of the broad gauge railway system in the 19th Century. They are thought to be the only surviving example from pre-1850 railway history in which engineering modelling of the very highest standard can be associated with prototype documentation (both handwritten and printed) with such outstanding provenance, accuracy and relevance. As such, they are of international significance and importance.
LOT 602 : SIR DANIEL GOOCH'S .1/8th SCALE MODEL OF THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY FIREFLY CLASS BROAD GAUGE 2-2-2 LOCOMOTIVE
This exceptionally fine and important model was the personal property of Daniel, later Sir Daniel Gooch and photographed with him c. 1845. The model is not only a superb example of the beauty and quality of contemporary Victorian craftsmanship but also represents a highly significant prototype in terms of the evolution of British locomotive design. Construction of the model was started and largely completed by Joseph Clement, a well known and highly respected model builder of the time, but it was not finished until after Clement's death (1844) and did not finally come into Gooch's possession until circa 1845 - which was probably the reason for the above-mentioned photograph. In recent years (1954-1995) the model has received much international recognition as a result of being lent to and displayed by the Science Museum, London.
The model itself can be appreciated on two main levels: firstly in terms of its high technical accuracy and excellence in relation to the study of contemporary locomotive development and secondly at the purely aesthetic level as a superb example of early Victorian engineering artistry and craftsmanship.
It is almost certain that the original drawings of the Firefly class - as submitted to the Board of the GWR for approval - were used for the model. These drawings show no wheels in the tender and therefore the fact that the wheels could not be fitted under the footplating without modification is not at all apparent. The prototype tenders were in fact fitted with small splashers, as on the locomotives, and this feature is shown in later drawings. However, the builder of the model beat out blisters to accept the tender wheels rather than fit splashers, which strongly suggests that the model had been commissioned (and its construction possibly even started) before the full sized examples were built and arguably before the revised drawings were issued.
Further evidence that the model was actually started well before its long-standing association with the prototype locomotive Ixion, is revealed by the fact that the locomotive wheelbase scales at 6ft 7in + 6ft 7in (as per the original Firefly drawings) whereas the Fenton, Murray and Jackson batch had a longer 6ft 8in + 6ft 8in wheelbase.
Built to .1/8th scale, the model was almost certainly expected to be steamable; but the large number of small firetubes fitted in the boiler, albeit accurate to the prototype arrangement, would make it unlikely to have given satisfaction, it being a well-known fact these days, although possibly not so apparent at the time the model was built, that to be successfully steamable, a working locomotive model needs to incorporate fewer and `larger than scale' fire tubes relative to those of the prototype. Even so, there is soot in the chimney of the model and some blackening of the firebox tubeplate as evidence that the model was fired up at some time. Forced draught tubes, probably used for starting up using hand bellows, were fitted under the firegrate - a ruse which had been used in 1828 by Robert Stephenson & Co. on their original Lancashire Witch locomotive.
The bulk of the construction is of brass and copper, though ferrous metal (almost certainly in the form of wrought iron) has been used for the frames, axles, motion, springs and some other small details. The motion and valve gear itself is an accurate representation of the original with all connections for the four-eccentric gab valve gear, crossheads, slide bars, connecting rods, crosshead driven feed pumps correctly made, fitted and cottered. The framing itself has correct outside sandwich frames running from front buffer beam to rear drag box, while the three inside frames run correctly from the back of the cylinder block to the firebox - seven frame plates in all. A further typical example of the thoroughness of attention to fine detail is revealed in the treatment of the safety handrails along the sides of the locomotive running plate; the handrails themselves are brass but the staunchions are of ferrous metal, as per prototype. There is some very slight minor damage in places of a long-standing nature and to be expected in a model of such age, none of which is significant.
Of particular interest is the exquisite use made of wood where called for in the prototype. All such elements on the model are made from rosewood and have been executed to a very high standard. Wooden buffer beams are correctly fitted, having the shackle and coupling chain of the period, not to mention an excellent representation of the leather bound buffers; while the characteristic form of wooden planking used for boiler lagging (and very typical of early Victorian locomotive finishing) is superbly rendered.
The boiler itself has the correct number of firetubes (131), some of which are almost completely blocked with soot; interestingly, many are of smaller than scale diameter which would certainly have impeded the early attempts to steam the model (see comment above). The correct size should be.1/4inch (representing the 2inch size fitted to the prototype) but a large number in the upper part of the boiler are of smaller size (approximately 1/8in), the lower tubes being of somewhat more accurate dimension. No reason can be offered for this departure from accuracy save for a very speculative conjecture that it may well have had something to do with the contemporary availability of suitably sized tubing.
The firebox and smoke box are of the correct shape and proportions, while the smokebox and firehole doors are both good representations of the protoype. The other remaining boiler fittings are well represented, well made and accurate. There is one directly loaded safety valve and one with a lever and Salter spring balance. The water gauge with its characteristic try-cocks is fitted to the right hand side of the firebox whilst two whistles with stopcocks are fitted on the back of the firebox. The headlight and hand feed pump are both exquisite models in their own right, being correct and complete in every detail; but strangely, the reversing lever and quadrant, though correct in shape, have neither latch nor notches. These latter items may be tangible evidence of finishing work carried out after the death of the principal builder.
The wheels have been hand crafted and although there are fewer spokes than on the prototype engines, each spoke on the model has been worked up and fitted immaculately. No reason can be advanced for the incorrect number of spokes save for the above-mentioned speculation (vide: the tender splashers) that the model may have been commenced ahead of the prototype engines at a time when the exact number of spokes to be fitted was not known by the model builder.
The tender is a faithful reproduction, built to the original drawings and having working brakes and boiler feed pipes with shut-off valves. The toolboxes under the watertank are fitted with opening doors and the buffers and coupling are true to prototype. The drawbar, buffer, springing and complete framing are accurate in every detail while the wheel blisters in the footplating have been referred to already. The tender springs, however, are non-working and semi-solid, albeit exquisitely fabricated; and again, this subtle difference from other parts of the model may represent later finishing work.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the whole ensemble is the abundant evidence of fine hand carving of almost every single component part. All rivets are hand fabricated to an astonishing degree of uniformity while the nuts and bolts are likewise hand cut and equally consistent. The fettling work on motion and similar components is of a similar high standard as is all the panel work, the above mentioned headlight being typical - a beautiful example in miniature of the coppersmith's art.
The model is one of the finest examples of miniature engineering which has ever been associated with the British railway scene, made all the more remarkable by the fact that at the time, the model builder would have little to compare with modern precision tools to help him and few, if any, precedents to follow. What is more, at the time it was built, although a tradition of fine model making was already established in many parts of the transport field, for example the maritime arena, it was relatively new in the growing railway industry. The growth of interest in this new type of accurate model making therefore merits further analysis in the context of this particular example.
From a very early date, Victorian railway engineers were very conscious of the appearance and finish of their creations, and `artist-engineers' soon became an accepted fact of life in the contemporary railway scene, the aesthetic quality of their designs being both admired and much remarked upon. The clean external lines of the British style of `locomotive architecture', wherein form and function formed a harmonious relationship free of unnecessary clutter, soon began to be known on an international scale and it can thus be of no great surprise that the steam locomotive soon began to be seen as an equally suitable subject for detail modelling as the `wooden walled' warships of an earlier generation had been.
But in the steam locomotive, of course, metal had taken over from wood as the prime material from which the prototype was made (compared with the mostly wooden construction of such items as road vehicles and ships). This therefore posed a challenge to the craft of the modelmakers compared with their previously favoured materials; and even though an ever-growing trade in new scientific and navigational instruments, well established in London by this time, may have made the availability of suitably qualified craftsmen in metal a likely probability (at a price), the fact remains that the builders of Gooch's model were undoubtedly breaking much new ground.
This model, therefore, even if not provably the first of a kind, is without doubt one of the pioneers in what soon became a whole new field of engineering artistry in miniature (combined with a high degree of accuracy) which continues to this day. Its only near-contemporary in terms of sheer quality (albeit built some ten years or so later) is the equally fine model of a Crampton locomotive which, by strange historical coincidence, was also placed on loan to the Science Museum by the original family, although currently (1996) not on public display. That Gooch's model can also stand comparison in every significant respect with the finest creations of today's modelmakers (working over 150 years after Joseph Clement first started to cut metal) marks it down as one of the most important railway models ever made, not to mention its continuing contribution to a better knowledge and understanding of the evolution of steam locomotive design.
For reasons advanced above, it is not possible to date the model with total precision. It seems likely, in view of the slight discrepancies already remarked upon between it and the prototype, that construction commenced circa 1840 before the full sized engines were in service - and that Joseph Clement worked on it until he died in 1844. The finishing work is therefore likely to have been done during 1844-1845, immediately preceding its presentation to Gooch in the latter year; while its later identification with Ixion (above) is almost certainly attributable to the peculiar and unique circumstances of the Gauge Trials of 1845.
Provenance: [Sir] Daniel Gooch and thence by descent
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE DESIGN ON WHICH THE MODEL IS BASED
The model represents the Firefly class, Sir Daniel Gooch's first independent locomotive design for the then fledgling Great Western Railway. The prototype design represented an almost total encapsulation of all that was best in British locomotive practice at the time and the story of its evolution from earlier types is a true microcosm of early locomotive history.
When Gooch was appointed Locomotive Superintendent to the Great Western in 1837, the company's locomotive stock was in poor shape, being largely comprised of very unsatisfactory locomotives built to a less than perfect specification issued to the then infant British locomotive building industry by the famous GWR engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This specification was only brief, stipulating a limiting piston speed of 280ft per minute at 30mph and calling for no more than 10.1/2 tons gross weight for a six wheeled engine. This resulted in a steady supply of ineffectual machines many with very large diameter driving wheels, some with geared transmission but nearly all with very small boilers. The inexperience and poor design skills of the builders who tendered for the job were exacerbated by bad workmanship from many of them.
Unfortunately for Brunel, Stephenson and Co. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, probably the finest locomotive builders of the time, did not tender for any GWR work. Robert Stephenson himself (one of the founders and Managing Partner of the firm) was arguably the finest locomotive engineer of his day and was the sole designer of the famous and seminal Rocket locomotive (Liverpool and Manchester Railway: 1829), even though his famous and publicity-conscious father, George, took much of the credit! The younger Stephenson took the basic `Rocket concept' with its multi-tube boiler firstly into `Planet' (a 2-2-0 type) followed by the even more significant `Patentee' with a 2-2-2 wheel arrangement.
Fortunately for Brunel's reputation (which would scarcely have been improved by the poor performance of the early GWR engines to his own specification), he chose to appoint Daniel Gooch to tackle the locomotive problem. Gooch, familiar with the Stephenson approach, having previously worked briefly for Robert (see biographical notes below), was presented with a further stroke of luck by virtue of the fact that Robert Stephenson & Co. suddenly had available a pair of locomotives which were not built to Brunel's limiting specification. These were of enlarged `Patentee' type and had been built to 5ft 6in gauge for the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad. When the order fell through, they were converted to Brunel's GWR 7ft gauge and taken into GWR stock. The first of them was named North Star, a full sized reconstruction of which (built in 1925 to the original GWR configuration) can now be seen at the Great Western Museum, Swindon, the reason being that the original (by now in somewhat modified form) was somewhat surprisingly broken up in 1906 on the orders of a later and equally famous GWR locomotive engineer, George Jackson Churchward.
The two Stephenson locomotives were so much better than the freaks which had been delivered to Brunel's original specification (North Star itself hauled the first GWR passenger train on 31st May 1838), that ten more were soon ordered by the company. Their distinctive outside `sandwich' frames were slotted and the large driving wheels necessitated the frames being curved over the axleboxes. This gave them extra strength and the form of construction became a standard method for most broad gauge express passenger locomotives until the end of the 7ft gauge in 1892. It is also interesting to note that this form of framing (which was adopted on Gooch's developed `Firefly' version of the Stephenson engines and finely re-created on the model) survived well into the 20th Century on GWR standard gauge locomotives too and did not vanish until 1937 when the last of the `Barnum' class was withdrawn.
Following a report on the locomotive stock to the directors, Gooch was authorised to have 105 new locomotives built to his new design, developed from the Stephenson originals. Drawings were prepared under the supervision of Thomas Russell Crampton, Gooch's new chief draughtsman, who was soon destined to become famous in his own right as a designer of a distinctive style of large-wheeled locomotive which ever afterwards bore his name - the `Crampton' type. Sets of lithographed copies of Crampton's drawings for Gooch's new design, plus iron templates and gauges, were supplied to the various locomotive builders in order to ensure full standardisation and interchangeability of parts and Gooch can thereby take credit for being the first locomotive superintendent to demand such rigorous compliance to specification.
The first of the new engines, Firefly, delivered to the GWR in March 1840 by Messrs Jones, Turner and Evans of Newport-le-Willows (Maker's works No. 18), is reputed to have achieved a maximum speed of 58mph on a three coach directors' special a few days after delivery. The train ran from Paddington to Reading in 45 minutes and the maximum speed itself was reached on the return journey when it covered the 30.3/4 miles between Twyford and Paddington in 37 minutes. Speeds in excess of 60mph soon became commonplace with this type of engine and Firefly itself, taken out of stock in November 1870, soon gave its name to a class which not only represented both a most significant and happy coming together of all that was best in British locomotive design at that time, but also formed the initial inspiration for the model.
It is not known with absolute certainty why the model was commissioned, but Gooch had good reason to be pleased with his design and since it was of long standing tradition in the transport business that significant steps along the way were marked with a suitably fine model, this may have been a partial reason. But the fact that the model (which carries no name) has traditionally been referred to as Ixion (not Firefly itself) gives a strong additional clue as to its place in Gooch's thinking. The prototype locomotive Ixion, a later member of the Firefly class, was built in October 1841 by Messrs Fenton, Murray and Jackson of Leeds (maker's works No. 31) and used in the famous Gauge Trials of December 1845 between Paddington and Didcot, beating the narrow gauge competitor hands down in the process. Given that Gooch received the finished model at or about the same time as this event, it is not difficult to make the linkage - in fact, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that Gooch may have used it in support of his advocacy of the broad gauge - see also notes on the supporting Gooch documents.
The model represents the Firefly type in its original condition but in due course (September 1863) Ixion was rebuilt and when finally withdrawn in July 1879 was the last of the class to remain in service. It is also interesting to note that a sister member of the same batch (Phlegethon), built in May 1842, was driven by Gooch himself (with Brunel on the footplate) on the occasion of Queen Victoria's first ever railway journey (Slough to Paddington) on 13th June 1842. But no matter what the exact reasons for its building, there is no doubt that the model, in addition to its uniquely fine quality in terms of craftsmanship, represents one of the most significant prototypes in the evolution of British locomotive design.
SIR DANIEL GOOCH (1816-1889): A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Of all the locomotive engineers who commenced their careers before the great `Railway Mania' of 1845-46, Daniel Gooch must be considered as one of the greatest if not the greatest of the period. Retrospective appraisal of such matters must always be subjective, of course, but his only serious rival for honours in the locomotive field at the time was Robert Stephenson (for whom Gooch worked for a time as a young man); and events were to demonstrate that it was Gooch who, by developing Stephenson's pioneer work (see previous sections), gave the world the express passenger locomotive which, inter alia, not only saved Brunel's daring broad gauge railway in the process but also demonstrated that safe travel was possible at speeds of 60mph or more.
The story of Daniel Gooch is inextricably bound up with the development of the Great Western Railway. It was less than six years after the Rainhill Trials of 1829 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (in which Robert Stephenson's Rocket had demonstrated its superiority over all other types) that the GWR Bill received the Royal Assent. However, the caution shown by that faction of the L&MR investors who had doubted the use of locomotives in favour of rope haulage by stationary engines (thus precipitating the Rainhill Trials) was soon to re-emerge as the GWR's young project engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, revealed his almost visionary plans for a high speed railway running on a broad gauge of seven feet. As outlined above, a saviour was to hand in the shape of Daniel Gooch who joined the GWR as Locomotive Superintendent on 18th August 1837; he was not yet 21!
He was born in 1816 in that cradle of railway engineering, the North East of England at Bedlington, on the River Blyth in Northumberland, his father having recently taken up employment in the local ironworks of Michael Longridge, also a founder of Robert Stephenson & Co., to whose family the Gooches were related by marriage. Daniel was the sixth child in what was to become a family of ten: five girls and five boys.
In spite of his youth, however, by the time Gooch joined the GWR he had gained considerable experience in all aspects of locomotive work, his early life being punctuated both by encounters with and work experience for many of the great pioneering engineers of the time, whose names occur in his curriculum vitae rather like a roll-call of all the well-known railway personalities of the age. Bedlington Iron Works (where Gooch's father worked) had supplied materials to George Stephenson for his first locomotive in 1814 and John Birkenshaw, the works manager, invented a new technique for rolling iron rails. This was a major step in the realisation of the potential of the steam locomotive for public railway traction, given that the early locomotives had earned quite a reputation for breaking up the rails.
Both of Daniel's elder brothers, Thomas Longridge Gooch and John Viret Gooch had entered the railway engineering profession (trained under George Stephenson and Jospeh Locke respectively) but, following his father's move to South Wales in 1831, Daniel began work at the age of fourteen at the Tredegar Ironworks where he was to encounter yet further links with the pioneering men of the railway age. The managing partner at Tredegar was one Samuel Homfray, son of the man who had held a joint share in Richard Trevithick's high pressure steam engine patent and who had laid a 500 guinea wager that ten tons of iron could be hauled by steam power on the Pen-y-Darren tramroad. That historical event had taken place on 22nd February 1804, thus establishing Richard Trevithick as the true inventor of the steam locomotive, and it is not too fanciful to deduce that the young Gooch was mindful of this heritage when he started work at Tredegar. Whatever, and although he was not an apprentice nor had any previous experience and was yet being paid a full wage, Daniel encountered no resentment in the men with whom he worked and who taught him everything he wanted to know.
Wasting no time - and after a short illness - Gooch moved to Scotland in 1835 where he encountered yet another pioneer, James Stirling, who owned the Dundee Foundry wherein Gooch obtained his first experience as a draughtsman. One year later, this restless young man moved again, this time to Robert Stepehnson & Co. in Newcastle where he continued his drawing work, including some locomotives destined for Russia and built to a gauge of six feet. It was this work that first showed him the advantages of a broader gauge in locomotive design terms and undoubtedly influenced his subsequent appointment to the GWR.
In 1837, Gooch was to have become a partner in a new locomotive firm but the project fell through and he was briefly unemployed (and also engaged to be married). He worked temporarily for his brother Tom until, hearing that the new GWR would need a locomotive man in the near future, he wrote what subsequently became a famous application letter to Brunel summarising his experience so far.
On appointment to the GWR, Gooch set up an engine house and workshops at Bishop's Road (the temporary terminus at London before Paddington) and one also at West Drayton by the canal where the locomotives were delivered. Coke ovens were built at West Drayton to supply fuel for the locomotives. Coal was not used until many years later when the invention of the firebox brick arch on the Midland Railway (by Charles Markham, assistant to Matthew Kirtley, the Midland's locomotive engineer) enabled the smoke nuisance caused by burning pure coal to be abated.
Further subsequently well known names entered Gooch's sphere of influence when Archibald Sturrock (later of Great Northern Railway fame), a former Dundee colleague, was appointed to take charge of the workshops which had been equipped with machine tools and equipment from Joseph Whitworth in Manchester. The new standard `Whitworth' screw threads were adopted and Joseph himself soon became a lifelong personal friend.
During the economic hard times of 1843-5, which immediately preceded the `Railway Mania', the GWR neither bought nor built any new locomotives but in May 1846, a prototype large new passenger design emerged as the first completely new locomotive to be built in the new works at Swindon. Derived from the `Firefly' class, this was Great Western, the basis for Gooch's subsequent masterpiece, the `Iron Duke' class of which the second member, Great Britain, ran the 53.1/4 miles from Paddington to Didcot in 1848 at an average speed of 67mph. (Note: a full size working reproduction of Iron Duke was built for the National Railway Museum in 1985 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the incorporation of the GWR).
Great Western, and its `Iron Duke' class offspring, were built by Gooch to show what the broad gauge could really do when put to the challenge, so much so that by the late 1840's, the Gauge Commissioners were to report: "We feel it a duty to observe that the public are mainly indebted for the present rate of speed and the increased accommodation of railway carriages to the genius of Mr Brunel and the liberalities of the Great Western Railway". It is perhaps unfair that Gooch's name was not mentioned as such in this statement given that he was certainly the instrument of Brunel's success; Brunel may have invented the broad gauge, but it was Daniel Gooch who made it work!
Express locomotive development also continued apace on the standard gauge railways, particularly in the years leading up to the Great Exhibition of 1851, when very large numbers of people began using the railways for the first time for both work-related travel and for leisure. But unfortunately (from 1853), broad gauge train speeds were somewhat reduced (for economic reasons), which partially offset the usual GWR superiority. Then came a long `battle' between the GWR and the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway (later called the West Midland Railway) which did nobody any real favours and eventually resulted in an amalgamation with the GWR in 1864. A new board of directors was appointed in consequence; but Gooch, unable to work with this new board (Brunel had died in 1859), resigned as Locomotive Superintendent.
It was at this point that Gooch was able to fall back on the fact that he was more than just a clever mechanic. He was also a considerable project engineer and after leaving the GWR, he concentrated on other business interests. Notable amongst these was his chairmanship of the Great Western Steamship Company and it was with the ship from which the company took its name that the celebrated and first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1866. For this achievement he became Sir Daniel Gooch, Bart., formally gazetted on 13th November 1866.
Whilst at Swindon, Gooch had put up as a potential Parliamentary candidate for Cricklade (which then included Swindon), but as `boss' of the `new' Swindon (ie the expanded part of the town consequent upon the arrival of the GWR) - and also because interference from the railway company was expected by both liberals and radicals (voting was still `open' then), a great deal of trouble was expected. In the event, by the time an election was called, Gooch had left the GWR and the secret ballot was the norm. Gooch sailed into Parliament on a good majority and remained there until 1885 when, at the age of 69, he decided that that was sufficient.
Meantime, following the West Midland amalgamation in 1864, the enlarged GWR had fallen into financial disarray and Gooch was soon recalled, being asked to become Chairman of the Company, a post which he assumed in 1865, occupying it until his death in 1889. By strict control of company finance, the storm of the `great depression' was weathered such that by 1883, a dividend of 6.3/8 was paid - the highest since 1848; in the year of his death it reached 6.3/4 the highest in Great Western history in the 70 year period between 1848 and 1918.
One of Gooch's greatest achievements came late in life: the building of the Severn Tunnel, a truly great Victorian industrial endevour still in use in our present day. The work, fraught with problems, escalating costs and incompetent contractors was such that Gooch himself wrote: "This has been a very anxious work for me. One has felt a doubt whether we ought to persevere with so large an expenditure, but I never lost hope of succeeding in the end"
And so he did.
Sir Daniel Gooch died in harness during 1889, after some 52 years of almost continuous work at the very centre of the British railway development. His career had spanned the years from the earliest main line development to the high point of the Victorian age and few other contemporary great engineers could match his record. He had trained with the very pioneers of the railway business and lived throughout the golden years of Brunel's broad gauge, which he had done so much to sustain and support, dying some three years before its final abandonment in 1892. History does not tell us what he really thought of the conversion of the GWR standard gauge (which had already been determined during his lifetime), but it seems somehow highly appropriate that his life should have ended when the lineal descendants of his superb epoch-making Firefly class were still in charge of the main trains to the West of England on that famous 7ft baulk road.
JOSEPH CLEMENT (1779-1844): MODEL MAKER EXTRAORDINARY
The principal contributor to the model was of an earlier generation to that of the man for whom it was built and, as has been stated, was to die before his masterpiece was completed. Interestingly, however, although 37 years older than Gooch, his working life was to interface with several of the same pioneers who have appeared in the context of Gooch himself; and it is likely that this fact alone may have influenced Gooch in his choice of model maker.
Joseph Clement was born in 1779 at Great Asby (Westmorland) and was the son of Thomas Clemmet (the subsequent slight change in surname is interesting though inexplicable; such things were not uncommon at the time) who was a hand loom weaver, and his wife Sarah. Other than elementary schooling, Joseph was essentially self-taught and first worked as a weaver, then as a slater. But as a result of metalworking skills learned in his spare time, including building a lathe, Clement eventually opted for an engineering career and by 1805 was making power looms in a nearby factory. It is interesting to note, in terms of historical perspective and in the context of engineering evolution, that this was the same year in which Admiral Lord Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar with wooden ships!
After a move to Glasgow in 1807, Clement took drawing lessons (presumably of an engineering type) and became a highly successful draughtsman. A move to London in 1813 ensured that his (at the time) rare combination of drawing and mechanical skills were put to good use in what was then the engineering `capital' of the world and by 1815 (the date of the Battle of Waterloo be it also noted), via a short intermediate spell as works manager at Bramahs, he had become the chief draughtsman at Maudslay, Sons & Field. After this experience at two of the most well known firms in the engineering business, he set up his own company in 1817 to build accurate large machine tools, including specialising in technical drawing and high precision machinery.
Six years later, he became engineer for the work with which his name will always be most famously associated: Charles Babbage's `Difference Engine' (the great-grandfather of all modern calculating machines and computers) which resides to this day in the Science Museum, London. This commission enabled Clement to finance new and highly accurate machine tools for his workshop, most notably a large planing machine built in 1831. This was of such size and precision as to enable him to use it as a main source of income for ten years.
In the later 1830s, Clement was involved in some of the earliest locomotive tests on the Great Western Railway and played a significant role in developing the first GWR `Test Wagon', the precursor of the dynamometer car of more modern years. It is by no means too fanciful to deduce that this work may also have drawn his skills and abilities to the attention of Daniel Gooch.
Clement was clearly a quite outstanding craftsman, draughtsman and tool maker. He introduced fluted screw cutting taps and was a firm advocate of the need for dimensional standardisation in screw threads. Hardly surprisingly, this brought him to the attention of Joseph Whitworth who has been mentioned already in the context of Daniel Gooch's career. In due course, his remarkable talents earned him no less than three medals from the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for his innovative achievements in the field of machine tools and other allied inventions. In this context, the link with the world of `Arts' is more than interesting: Clement was active during that happy time when art and engineering were not as far apart as they subsequently seemed to become and in a very real sense, his model reflects that close association by truly combining engineering with artistry.
At this range in time, it is not possible to determine with exactitude the precise personal contribution which Clement made to the model, but Gooch himself is recorded as having stated shortly after Clement's death: "This is a very beautiful piece of work ... Many of the parts were made by Clement who used to be in those days the best workman in London." To have said this at all, Gooch must surely have had a good knowledge and appreciation of Joseph Clement's knowledge and ability, not to mention his part in the project.
Some commentators seem to have read too much into the fact that Gooch did not get the model until 1845 and that Clement died in 1844, thus inferring that Clement's contribution was less than it really was. Indeed one source states: "He (Clement) died in 1844 so that at least some of the model was made prior to that time." This contrasts with Gooch's above comment that `many' parts were made by Clement. On balance, and given the fact that the model itself gives very strong evidence of having been commenced as early as 1840 (see `Description of the Model' - above), it seems wholly fair to attribute the bulk of the really fine work to this superb craftsman, though it is possible that he may have delegated some of the less precise work to one or other of his staff.
In this respect, interesting parallels may again be drawn with the fine art world wherein it was not uncommon for the great `Master Painters' to use large numbers of assistants and students in the execution of their work; they certainly did not put on every brushful of paint personally and Clement may have taken a similar view in the context of his precision engineering work. We shall probably never know, given that there is no surviving record as to who, if any individual person, may have completed the work.
Further circumstantial evidence of the model probably having been commenced at an early date is also contained in Gooch's will of 1886 in which is written (as a bequest), the following comment: "The model of the locomotive engine and tender designed by me in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty eight and commissioned for the Great Western Railway", which final words raise the interesting but unanswered question of how the model later came to be in Gooch's personal possession! But no matter the circumstances, it is hard to believe that Gooch would have waited for six or seven years before commissioning (either for himself or the company) a model of a type which was obviously very close to his heart. The fact that the model later became identified with Ixion (for reasons given above) has merely served to confuse the matter of its exact building date. The later attribution of engine name quite clearly had nothing to do with Joseph Clement and the lack of any name at all on the model, taken along with other details of the model itself, serves to support the earlier date of the building.
Clement was well aware of his ability, it being on the record that he often `astonished' customers with his charges. The presumption must therefore be that Daniel Gooch knew full well what he was doing when he asked Clement to make the model - there is no record of how much money changed hands at the time. But no matter; via Clement, this fine model touches two centuries in the evolution of mechanical engineering. Its instigator, Daniel Gooch, was very much a man of the 19th Century and clearly aware of the potential importance of what he was doing; but his instrument of choice was a man whose working life stretched back almost to the dawn of what we now call the Industrial Age. As such, the model's place in the total history of engineering technology must surely rest secure.
The Gooch Artefacts offered in this sale not only represent a combination of model and supporting documentation of a quite outstanding and unique nature, but also form a vital part of the contemporary history of the development of the broad gauge railway system in the 19th Century. They are thought to be the only surviving example from pre-1850 railway history in which engineering modelling of the very highest standard can be associated with prototype documentation (both handwritten and printed) with such outstanding provenance, accuracy and relevance. As such, they are of international significance and importance.
LOT 602 : SIR DANIEL GOOCH'S .1/8th SCALE MODEL OF THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY FIREFLY CLASS BROAD GAUGE 2-2-2 LOCOMOTIVE
This exceptionally fine and important model was the personal property of Daniel, later Sir Daniel Gooch and photographed with him c. 1845. The model is not only a superb example of the beauty and quality of contemporary Victorian craftsmanship but also represents a highly significant prototype in terms of the evolution of British locomotive design. Construction of the model was started and largely completed by Joseph Clement, a well known and highly respected model builder of the time, but it was not finished until after Clement's death (1844) and did not finally come into Gooch's possession until circa 1845 - which was probably the reason for the above-mentioned photograph. In recent years (1954-1995) the model has received much international recognition as a result of being lent to and displayed by the Science Museum, London.
The model itself can be appreciated on two main levels: firstly in terms of its high technical accuracy and excellence in relation to the study of contemporary locomotive development and secondly at the purely aesthetic level as a superb example of early Victorian engineering artistry and craftsmanship.
It is almost certain that the original drawings of the Firefly class - as submitted to the Board of the GWR for approval - were used for the model. These drawings show no wheels in the tender and therefore the fact that the wheels could not be fitted under the footplating without modification is not at all apparent. The prototype tenders were in fact fitted with small splashers, as on the locomotives, and this feature is shown in later drawings. However, the builder of the model beat out blisters to accept the tender wheels rather than fit splashers, which strongly suggests that the model had been commissioned (and its construction possibly even started) before the full sized examples were built and arguably before the revised drawings were issued.
Further evidence that the model was actually started well before its long-standing association with the prototype locomotive Ixion, is revealed by the fact that the locomotive wheelbase scales at 6ft 7in + 6ft 7in (as per the original Firefly drawings) whereas the Fenton, Murray and Jackson batch had a longer 6ft 8in + 6ft 8in wheelbase.
Built to .1/8th scale, the model was almost certainly expected to be steamable; but the large number of small firetubes fitted in the boiler, albeit accurate to the prototype arrangement, would make it unlikely to have given satisfaction, it being a well-known fact these days, although possibly not so apparent at the time the model was built, that to be successfully steamable, a working locomotive model needs to incorporate fewer and `larger than scale' fire tubes relative to those of the prototype. Even so, there is soot in the chimney of the model and some blackening of the firebox tubeplate as evidence that the model was fired up at some time. Forced draught tubes, probably used for starting up using hand bellows, were fitted under the firegrate - a ruse which had been used in 1828 by Robert Stephenson & Co. on their original Lancashire Witch locomotive.
The bulk of the construction is of brass and copper, though ferrous metal (almost certainly in the form of wrought iron) has been used for the frames, axles, motion, springs and some other small details. The motion and valve gear itself is an accurate representation of the original with all connections for the four-eccentric gab valve gear, crossheads, slide bars, connecting rods, crosshead driven feed pumps correctly made, fitted and cottered. The framing itself has correct outside sandwich frames running from front buffer beam to rear drag box, while the three inside frames run correctly from the back of the cylinder block to the firebox - seven frame plates in all. A further typical example of the thoroughness of attention to fine detail is revealed in the treatment of the safety handrails along the sides of the locomotive running plate; the handrails themselves are brass but the staunchions are of ferrous metal, as per prototype. There is some very slight minor damage in places of a long-standing nature and to be expected in a model of such age, none of which is significant.
Of particular interest is the exquisite use made of wood where called for in the prototype. All such elements on the model are made from rosewood and have been executed to a very high standard. Wooden buffer beams are correctly fitted, having the shackle and coupling chain of the period, not to mention an excellent representation of the leather bound buffers; while the characteristic form of wooden planking used for boiler lagging (and very typical of early Victorian locomotive finishing) is superbly rendered.
The boiler itself has the correct number of firetubes (131), some of which are almost completely blocked with soot; interestingly, many are of smaller than scale diameter which would certainly have impeded the early attempts to steam the model (see comment above). The correct size should be.1/4inch (representing the 2inch size fitted to the prototype) but a large number in the upper part of the boiler are of smaller size (approximately 1/8in), the lower tubes being of somewhat more accurate dimension. No reason can be offered for this departure from accuracy save for a very speculative conjecture that it may well have had something to do with the contemporary availability of suitably sized tubing.
The firebox and smoke box are of the correct shape and proportions, while the smokebox and firehole doors are both good representations of the protoype. The other remaining boiler fittings are well represented, well made and accurate. There is one directly loaded safety valve and one with a lever and Salter spring balance. The water gauge with its characteristic try-cocks is fitted to the right hand side of the firebox whilst two whistles with stopcocks are fitted on the back of the firebox. The headlight and hand feed pump are both exquisite models in their own right, being correct and complete in every detail; but strangely, the reversing lever and quadrant, though correct in shape, have neither latch nor notches. These latter items may be tangible evidence of finishing work carried out after the death of the principal builder.
The wheels have been hand crafted and although there are fewer spokes than on the prototype engines, each spoke on the model has been worked up and fitted immaculately. No reason can be advanced for the incorrect number of spokes save for the above-mentioned speculation (vide: the tender splashers) that the model may have been commenced ahead of the prototype engines at a time when the exact number of spokes to be fitted was not known by the model builder.
The tender is a faithful reproduction, built to the original drawings and having working brakes and boiler feed pipes with shut-off valves. The toolboxes under the watertank are fitted with opening doors and the buffers and coupling are true to prototype. The drawbar, buffer, springing and complete framing are accurate in every detail while the wheel blisters in the footplating have been referred to already. The tender springs, however, are non-working and semi-solid, albeit exquisitely fabricated; and again, this subtle difference from other parts of the model may represent later finishing work.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the whole ensemble is the abundant evidence of fine hand carving of almost every single component part. All rivets are hand fabricated to an astonishing degree of uniformity while the nuts and bolts are likewise hand cut and equally consistent. The fettling work on motion and similar components is of a similar high standard as is all the panel work, the above mentioned headlight being typical - a beautiful example in miniature of the coppersmith's art.
The model is one of the finest examples of miniature engineering which has ever been associated with the British railway scene, made all the more remarkable by the fact that at the time, the model builder would have little to compare with modern precision tools to help him and few, if any, precedents to follow. What is more, at the time it was built, although a tradition of fine model making was already established in many parts of the transport field, for example the maritime arena, it was relatively new in the growing railway industry. The growth of interest in this new type of accurate model making therefore merits further analysis in the context of this particular example.
From a very early date, Victorian railway engineers were very conscious of the appearance and finish of their creations, and `artist-engineers' soon became an accepted fact of life in the contemporary railway scene, the aesthetic quality of their designs being both admired and much remarked upon. The clean external lines of the British style of `locomotive architecture', wherein form and function formed a harmonious relationship free of unnecessary clutter, soon began to be known on an international scale and it can thus be of no great surprise that the steam locomotive soon began to be seen as an equally suitable subject for detail modelling as the `wooden walled' warships of an earlier generation had been.
But in the steam locomotive, of course, metal had taken over from wood as the prime material from which the prototype was made (compared with the mostly wooden construction of such items as road vehicles and ships). This therefore posed a challenge to the craft of the modelmakers compared with their previously favoured materials; and even though an ever-growing trade in new scientific and navigational instruments, well established in London by this time, may have made the availability of suitably qualified craftsmen in metal a likely probability (at a price), the fact remains that the builders of Gooch's model were undoubtedly breaking much new ground.
This model, therefore, even if not provably the first of a kind, is without doubt one of the pioneers in what soon became a whole new field of engineering artistry in miniature (combined with a high degree of accuracy) which continues to this day. Its only near-contemporary in terms of sheer quality (albeit built some ten years or so later) is the equally fine model of a Crampton locomotive which, by strange historical coincidence, was also placed on loan to the Science Museum by the original family, although currently (1996) not on public display. That Gooch's model can also stand comparison in every significant respect with the finest creations of today's modelmakers (working over 150 years after Joseph Clement first started to cut metal) marks it down as one of the most important railway models ever made, not to mention its continuing contribution to a better knowledge and understanding of the evolution of steam locomotive design.
For reasons advanced above, it is not possible to date the model with total precision. It seems likely, in view of the slight discrepancies already remarked upon between it and the prototype, that construction commenced circa 1840 before the full sized engines were in service - and that Joseph Clement worked on it until he died in 1844. The finishing work is therefore likely to have been done during 1844-1845, immediately preceding its presentation to Gooch in the latter year; while its later identification with Ixion (above) is almost certainly attributable to the peculiar and unique circumstances of the Gauge Trials of 1845.
Provenance: [Sir] Daniel Gooch and thence by descent
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE DESIGN ON WHICH THE MODEL IS BASED
The model represents the Firefly class, Sir Daniel Gooch's first independent locomotive design for the then fledgling Great Western Railway. The prototype design represented an almost total encapsulation of all that was best in British locomotive practice at the time and the story of its evolution from earlier types is a true microcosm of early locomotive history.
When Gooch was appointed Locomotive Superintendent to the Great Western in 1837, the company's locomotive stock was in poor shape, being largely comprised of very unsatisfactory locomotives built to a less than perfect specification issued to the then infant British locomotive building industry by the famous GWR engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This specification was only brief, stipulating a limiting piston speed of 280ft per minute at 30mph and calling for no more than 10.1/2 tons gross weight for a six wheeled engine. This resulted in a steady supply of ineffectual machines many with very large diameter driving wheels, some with geared transmission but nearly all with very small boilers. The inexperience and poor design skills of the builders who tendered for the job were exacerbated by bad workmanship from many of them.
Unfortunately for Brunel, Stephenson and Co. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, probably the finest locomotive builders of the time, did not tender for any GWR work. Robert Stephenson himself (one of the founders and Managing Partner of the firm) was arguably the finest locomotive engineer of his day and was the sole designer of the famous and seminal Rocket locomotive (Liverpool and Manchester Railway: 1829), even though his famous and publicity-conscious father, George, took much of the credit! The younger Stephenson took the basic `Rocket concept' with its multi-tube boiler firstly into `Planet' (a 2-2-0 type) followed by the even more significant `Patentee' with a 2-2-2 wheel arrangement.
Fortunately for Brunel's reputation (which would scarcely have been improved by the poor performance of the early GWR engines to his own specification), he chose to appoint Daniel Gooch to tackle the locomotive problem. Gooch, familiar with the Stephenson approach, having previously worked briefly for Robert (see biographical notes below), was presented with a further stroke of luck by virtue of the fact that Robert Stephenson & Co. suddenly had available a pair of locomotives which were not built to Brunel's limiting specification. These were of enlarged `Patentee' type and had been built to 5ft 6in gauge for the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad. When the order fell through, they were converted to Brunel's GWR 7ft gauge and taken into GWR stock. The first of them was named North Star, a full sized reconstruction of which (built in 1925 to the original GWR configuration) can now be seen at the Great Western Museum, Swindon, the reason being that the original (by now in somewhat modified form) was somewhat surprisingly broken up in 1906 on the orders of a later and equally famous GWR locomotive engineer, George Jackson Churchward.
The two Stephenson locomotives were so much better than the freaks which had been delivered to Brunel's original specification (North Star itself hauled the first GWR passenger train on 31st May 1838), that ten more were soon ordered by the company. Their distinctive outside `sandwich' frames were slotted and the large driving wheels necessitated the frames being curved over the axleboxes. This gave them extra strength and the form of construction became a standard method for most broad gauge express passenger locomotives until the end of the 7ft gauge in 1892. It is also interesting to note that this form of framing (which was adopted on Gooch's developed `Firefly' version of the Stephenson engines and finely re-created on the model) survived well into the 20th Century on GWR standard gauge locomotives too and did not vanish until 1937 when the last of the `Barnum' class was withdrawn.
Following a report on the locomotive stock to the directors, Gooch was authorised to have 105 new locomotives built to his new design, developed from the Stephenson originals. Drawings were prepared under the supervision of Thomas Russell Crampton, Gooch's new chief draughtsman, who was soon destined to become famous in his own right as a designer of a distinctive style of large-wheeled locomotive which ever afterwards bore his name - the `Crampton' type. Sets of lithographed copies of Crampton's drawings for Gooch's new design, plus iron templates and gauges, were supplied to the various locomotive builders in order to ensure full standardisation and interchangeability of parts and Gooch can thereby take credit for being the first locomotive superintendent to demand such rigorous compliance to specification.
The first of the new engines, Firefly, delivered to the GWR in March 1840 by Messrs Jones, Turner and Evans of Newport-le-Willows (Maker's works No. 18), is reputed to have achieved a maximum speed of 58mph on a three coach directors' special a few days after delivery. The train ran from Paddington to Reading in 45 minutes and the maximum speed itself was reached on the return journey when it covered the 30.3/4 miles between Twyford and Paddington in 37 minutes. Speeds in excess of 60mph soon became commonplace with this type of engine and Firefly itself, taken out of stock in November 1870, soon gave its name to a class which not only represented both a most significant and happy coming together of all that was best in British locomotive design at that time, but also formed the initial inspiration for the model.
It is not known with absolute certainty why the model was commissioned, but Gooch had good reason to be pleased with his design and since it was of long standing tradition in the transport business that significant steps along the way were marked with a suitably fine model, this may have been a partial reason. But the fact that the model (which carries no name) has traditionally been referred to as Ixion (not Firefly itself) gives a strong additional clue as to its place in Gooch's thinking. The prototype locomotive Ixion, a later member of the Firefly class, was built in October 1841 by Messrs Fenton, Murray and Jackson of Leeds (maker's works No. 31) and used in the famous Gauge Trials of December 1845 between Paddington and Didcot, beating the narrow gauge competitor hands down in the process. Given that Gooch received the finished model at or about the same time as this event, it is not difficult to make the linkage - in fact, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that Gooch may have used it in support of his advocacy of the broad gauge - see also notes on the supporting Gooch documents.
The model represents the Firefly type in its original condition but in due course (September 1863) Ixion was rebuilt and when finally withdrawn in July 1879 was the last of the class to remain in service. It is also interesting to note that a sister member of the same batch (Phlegethon), built in May 1842, was driven by Gooch himself (with Brunel on the footplate) on the occasion of Queen Victoria's first ever railway journey (Slough to Paddington) on 13th June 1842. But no matter what the exact reasons for its building, there is no doubt that the model, in addition to its uniquely fine quality in terms of craftsmanship, represents one of the most significant prototypes in the evolution of British locomotive design.
SIR DANIEL GOOCH (1816-1889): A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Of all the locomotive engineers who commenced their careers before the great `Railway Mania' of 1845-46, Daniel Gooch must be considered as one of the greatest if not the greatest of the period. Retrospective appraisal of such matters must always be subjective, of course, but his only serious rival for honours in the locomotive field at the time was Robert Stephenson (for whom Gooch worked for a time as a young man); and events were to demonstrate that it was Gooch who, by developing Stephenson's pioneer work (see previous sections), gave the world the express passenger locomotive which, inter alia, not only saved Brunel's daring broad gauge railway in the process but also demonstrated that safe travel was possible at speeds of 60mph or more.
The story of Daniel Gooch is inextricably bound up with the development of the Great Western Railway. It was less than six years after the Rainhill Trials of 1829 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (in which Robert Stephenson's Rocket had demonstrated its superiority over all other types) that the GWR Bill received the Royal Assent. However, the caution shown by that faction of the L&MR investors who had doubted the use of locomotives in favour of rope haulage by stationary engines (thus precipitating the Rainhill Trials) was soon to re-emerge as the GWR's young project engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, revealed his almost visionary plans for a high speed railway running on a broad gauge of seven feet. As outlined above, a saviour was to hand in the shape of Daniel Gooch who joined the GWR as Locomotive Superintendent on 18th August 1837; he was not yet 21!
He was born in 1816 in that cradle of railway engineering, the North East of England at Bedlington, on the River Blyth in Northumberland, his father having recently taken up employment in the local ironworks of Michael Longridge, also a founder of Robert Stephenson & Co., to whose family the Gooches were related by marriage. Daniel was the sixth child in what was to become a family of ten: five girls and five boys.
In spite of his youth, however, by the time Gooch joined the GWR he had gained considerable experience in all aspects of locomotive work, his early life being punctuated both by encounters with and work experience for many of the great pioneering engineers of the time, whose names occur in his curriculum vitae rather like a roll-call of all the well-known railway personalities of the age. Bedlington Iron Works (where Gooch's father worked) had supplied materials to George Stephenson for his first locomotive in 1814 and John Birkenshaw, the works manager, invented a new technique for rolling iron rails. This was a major step in the realisation of the potential of the steam locomotive for public railway traction, given that the early locomotives had earned quite a reputation for breaking up the rails.
Both of Daniel's elder brothers, Thomas Longridge Gooch and John Viret Gooch had entered the railway engineering profession (trained under George Stephenson and Jospeh Locke respectively) but, following his father's move to South Wales in 1831, Daniel began work at the age of fourteen at the Tredegar Ironworks where he was to encounter yet further links with the pioneering men of the railway age. The managing partner at Tredegar was one Samuel Homfray, son of the man who had held a joint share in Richard Trevithick's high pressure steam engine patent and who had laid a 500 guinea wager that ten tons of iron could be hauled by steam power on the Pen-y-Darren tramroad. That historical event had taken place on 22nd February 1804, thus establishing Richard Trevithick as the true inventor of the steam locomotive, and it is not too fanciful to deduce that the young Gooch was mindful of this heritage when he started work at Tredegar. Whatever, and although he was not an apprentice nor had any previous experience and was yet being paid a full wage, Daniel encountered no resentment in the men with whom he worked and who taught him everything he wanted to know.
Wasting no time - and after a short illness - Gooch moved to Scotland in 1835 where he encountered yet another pioneer, James Stirling, who owned the Dundee Foundry wherein Gooch obtained his first experience as a draughtsman. One year later, this restless young man moved again, this time to Robert Stepehnson & Co. in Newcastle where he continued his drawing work, including some locomotives destined for Russia and built to a gauge of six feet. It was this work that first showed him the advantages of a broader gauge in locomotive design terms and undoubtedly influenced his subsequent appointment to the GWR.
In 1837, Gooch was to have become a partner in a new locomotive firm but the project fell through and he was briefly unemployed (and also engaged to be married). He worked temporarily for his brother Tom until, hearing that the new GWR would need a locomotive man in the near future, he wrote what subsequently became a famous application letter to Brunel summarising his experience so far.
On appointment to the GWR, Gooch set up an engine house and workshops at Bishop's Road (the temporary terminus at London before Paddington) and one also at West Drayton by the canal where the locomotives were delivered. Coke ovens were built at West Drayton to supply fuel for the locomotives. Coal was not used until many years later when the invention of the firebox brick arch on the Midland Railway (by Charles Markham, assistant to Matthew Kirtley, the Midland's locomotive engineer) enabled the smoke nuisance caused by burning pure coal to be abated.
Further subsequently well known names entered Gooch's sphere of influence when Archibald Sturrock (later of Great Northern Railway fame), a former Dundee colleague, was appointed to take charge of the workshops which had been equipped with machine tools and equipment from Joseph Whitworth in Manchester. The new standard `Whitworth' screw threads were adopted and Joseph himself soon became a lifelong personal friend.
During the economic hard times of 1843-5, which immediately preceded the `Railway Mania', the GWR neither bought nor built any new locomotives but in May 1846, a prototype large new passenger design emerged as the first completely new locomotive to be built in the new works at Swindon. Derived from the `Firefly' class, this was Great Western, the basis for Gooch's subsequent masterpiece, the `Iron Duke' class of which the second member, Great Britain, ran the 53.1/4 miles from Paddington to Didcot in 1848 at an average speed of 67mph. (Note: a full size working reproduction of Iron Duke was built for the National Railway Museum in 1985 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the incorporation of the GWR).
Great Western, and its `Iron Duke' class offspring, were built by Gooch to show what the broad gauge could really do when put to the challenge, so much so that by the late 1840's, the Gauge Commissioners were to report: "We feel it a duty to observe that the public are mainly indebted for the present rate of speed and the increased accommodation of railway carriages to the genius of Mr Brunel and the liberalities of the Great Western Railway". It is perhaps unfair that Gooch's name was not mentioned as such in this statement given that he was certainly the instrument of Brunel's success; Brunel may have invented the broad gauge, but it was Daniel Gooch who made it work!
Express locomotive development also continued apace on the standard gauge railways, particularly in the years leading up to the Great Exhibition of 1851, when very large numbers of people began using the railways for the first time for both work-related travel and for leisure. But unfortunately (from 1853), broad gauge train speeds were somewhat reduced (for economic reasons), which partially offset the usual GWR superiority. Then came a long `battle' between the GWR and the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway (later called the West Midland Railway) which did nobody any real favours and eventually resulted in an amalgamation with the GWR in 1864. A new board of directors was appointed in consequence; but Gooch, unable to work with this new board (Brunel had died in 1859), resigned as Locomotive Superintendent.
It was at this point that Gooch was able to fall back on the fact that he was more than just a clever mechanic. He was also a considerable project engineer and after leaving the GWR, he concentrated on other business interests. Notable amongst these was his chairmanship of the Great Western Steamship Company and it was with the ship from which the company took its name that the celebrated and first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1866. For this achievement he became Sir Daniel Gooch, Bart., formally gazetted on 13th November 1866.
Whilst at Swindon, Gooch had put up as a potential Parliamentary candidate for Cricklade (which then included Swindon), but as `boss' of the `new' Swindon (ie the expanded part of the town consequent upon the arrival of the GWR) - and also because interference from the railway company was expected by both liberals and radicals (voting was still `open' then), a great deal of trouble was expected. In the event, by the time an election was called, Gooch had left the GWR and the secret ballot was the norm. Gooch sailed into Parliament on a good majority and remained there until 1885 when, at the age of 69, he decided that that was sufficient.
Meantime, following the West Midland amalgamation in 1864, the enlarged GWR had fallen into financial disarray and Gooch was soon recalled, being asked to become Chairman of the Company, a post which he assumed in 1865, occupying it until his death in 1889. By strict control of company finance, the storm of the `great depression' was weathered such that by 1883, a dividend of 6.3/8 was paid - the highest since 1848; in the year of his death it reached 6.3/4 the highest in Great Western history in the 70 year period between 1848 and 1918.
One of Gooch's greatest achievements came late in life: the building of the Severn Tunnel, a truly great Victorian industrial endevour still in use in our present day. The work, fraught with problems, escalating costs and incompetent contractors was such that Gooch himself wrote: "This has been a very anxious work for me. One has felt a doubt whether we ought to persevere with so large an expenditure, but I never lost hope of succeeding in the end"
And so he did.
Sir Daniel Gooch died in harness during 1889, after some 52 years of almost continuous work at the very centre of the British railway development. His career had spanned the years from the earliest main line development to the high point of the Victorian age and few other contemporary great engineers could match his record. He had trained with the very pioneers of the railway business and lived throughout the golden years of Brunel's broad gauge, which he had done so much to sustain and support, dying some three years before its final abandonment in 1892. History does not tell us what he really thought of the conversion of the GWR standard gauge (which had already been determined during his lifetime), but it seems somehow highly appropriate that his life should have ended when the lineal descendants of his superb epoch-making Firefly class were still in charge of the main trains to the West of England on that famous 7ft baulk road.
JOSEPH CLEMENT (1779-1844): MODEL MAKER EXTRAORDINARY
The principal contributor to the model was of an earlier generation to that of the man for whom it was built and, as has been stated, was to die before his masterpiece was completed. Interestingly, however, although 37 years older than Gooch, his working life was to interface with several of the same pioneers who have appeared in the context of Gooch himself; and it is likely that this fact alone may have influenced Gooch in his choice of model maker.
Joseph Clement was born in 1779 at Great Asby (Westmorland) and was the son of Thomas Clemmet (the subsequent slight change in surname is interesting though inexplicable; such things were not uncommon at the time) who was a hand loom weaver, and his wife Sarah. Other than elementary schooling, Joseph was essentially self-taught and first worked as a weaver, then as a slater. But as a result of metalworking skills learned in his spare time, including building a lathe, Clement eventually opted for an engineering career and by 1805 was making power looms in a nearby factory. It is interesting to note, in terms of historical perspective and in the context of engineering evolution, that this was the same year in which Admiral Lord Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar with wooden ships!
After a move to Glasgow in 1807, Clement took drawing lessons (presumably of an engineering type) and became a highly successful draughtsman. A move to London in 1813 ensured that his (at the time) rare combination of drawing and mechanical skills were put to good use in what was then the engineering `capital' of the world and by 1815 (the date of the Battle of Waterloo be it also noted), via a short intermediate spell as works manager at Bramahs, he had become the chief draughtsman at Maudslay, Sons & Field. After this experience at two of the most well known firms in the engineering business, he set up his own company in 1817 to build accurate large machine tools, including specialising in technical drawing and high precision machinery.
Six years later, he became engineer for the work with which his name will always be most famously associated: Charles Babbage's `Difference Engine' (the great-grandfather of all modern calculating machines and computers) which resides to this day in the Science Museum, London. This commission enabled Clement to finance new and highly accurate machine tools for his workshop, most notably a large planing machine built in 1831. This was of such size and precision as to enable him to use it as a main source of income for ten years.
In the later 1830s, Clement was involved in some of the earliest locomotive tests on the Great Western Railway and played a significant role in developing the first GWR `Test Wagon', the precursor of the dynamometer car of more modern years. It is by no means too fanciful to deduce that this work may also have drawn his skills and abilities to the attention of Daniel Gooch.
Clement was clearly a quite outstanding craftsman, draughtsman and tool maker. He introduced fluted screw cutting taps and was a firm advocate of the need for dimensional standardisation in screw threads. Hardly surprisingly, this brought him to the attention of Joseph Whitworth who has been mentioned already in the context of Daniel Gooch's career. In due course, his remarkable talents earned him no less than three medals from the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for his innovative achievements in the field of machine tools and other allied inventions. In this context, the link with the world of `Arts' is more than interesting: Clement was active during that happy time when art and engineering were not as far apart as they subsequently seemed to become and in a very real sense, his model reflects that close association by truly combining engineering with artistry.
At this range in time, it is not possible to determine with exactitude the precise personal contribution which Clement made to the model, but Gooch himself is recorded as having stated shortly after Clement's death: "This is a very beautiful piece of work ... Many of the parts were made by Clement who used to be in those days the best workman in London." To have said this at all, Gooch must surely have had a good knowledge and appreciation of Joseph Clement's knowledge and ability, not to mention his part in the project.
Some commentators seem to have read too much into the fact that Gooch did not get the model until 1845 and that Clement died in 1844, thus inferring that Clement's contribution was less than it really was. Indeed one source states: "He (Clement) died in 1844 so that at least some of the model was made prior to that time." This contrasts with Gooch's above comment that `many' parts were made by Clement. On balance, and given the fact that the model itself gives very strong evidence of having been commenced as early as 1840 (see `Description of the Model' - above), it seems wholly fair to attribute the bulk of the really fine work to this superb craftsman, though it is possible that he may have delegated some of the less precise work to one or other of his staff.
In this respect, interesting parallels may again be drawn with the fine art world wherein it was not uncommon for the great `Master Painters' to use large numbers of assistants and students in the execution of their work; they certainly did not put on every brushful of paint personally and Clement may have taken a similar view in the context of his precision engineering work. We shall probably never know, given that there is no surviving record as to who, if any individual person, may have completed the work.
Further circumstantial evidence of the model probably having been commenced at an early date is also contained in Gooch's will of 1886 in which is written (as a bequest), the following comment: "The model of the locomotive engine and tender designed by me in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty eight and commissioned for the Great Western Railway", which final words raise the interesting but unanswered question of how the model later came to be in Gooch's personal possession! But no matter the circumstances, it is hard to believe that Gooch would have waited for six or seven years before commissioning (either for himself or the company) a model of a type which was obviously very close to his heart. The fact that the model later became identified with Ixion (for reasons given above) has merely served to confuse the matter of its exact building date. The later attribution of engine name quite clearly had nothing to do with Joseph Clement and the lack of any name at all on the model, taken along with other details of the model itself, serves to support the earlier date of the building.
Clement was well aware of his ability, it being on the record that he often `astonished' customers with his charges. The presumption must therefore be that Daniel Gooch knew full well what he was doing when he asked Clement to make the model - there is no record of how much money changed hands at the time. But no matter; via Clement, this fine model touches two centuries in the evolution of mechanical engineering. Its instigator, Daniel Gooch, was very much a man of the 19th Century and clearly aware of the potential importance of what he was doing; but his instrument of choice was a man whose working life stretched back almost to the dawn of what we now call the Industrial Age. As such, the model's place in the total history of engineering technology must surely rest secure.