F

Fairbairn, Sir William, 1789-1874

A native of Kelso in the Scottish borders, he trained as a millwright and then an engineer, before entering manufacturing as a partner of James Lillie in 1817, although the partnership was dissolved in 1832. Meanwhile, he built the famous iron-hulled canal boat Lord Dundas in 1831, and worked on wrought-iron shipbuilding in both Manchester and London, and his patents included a riveting machine in 1839. His work on cast-iron beams and testing led to Robert Stephenson taking his advice on both the Britannia and Conway tubular bridges. In 1846, he took out a patent on wrought-iron beams. He became president of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1854, and his later life included many honours and medals, including being created baronet in 1869.

Fairbairn, Charles Edward, 1887-1945

Apprenticed to Henry Fowler at the Derby locomotive works of the Midland Railway in 1910, he joined Siemens in 1912, working on the overhead line electrification of the North Eastern Railway freight line between Newport and Shilden. In 1919, he created the English Electric traction department and was appointed manager of its works at Preston and Stafford. He returned to the railways in 1934 when he was appointed chief electric engineer on the London, Midland & Scottish Railway under Sir William Stanier, whom he succeeded as CME in 1944. He oversaw large scale introduction of diesel-electric shunting locomotives and proposed 1,500 hp main line diesel-electric locomotives before his sudden death in 1945.

Fairlie, Robert Francis, 1831-1885

Trained on the London & North Western Railway before becoming locomotive superintendent on the Londonderry & Coleraine Railway, after which he worked in India. He objected to the trend to increase locomotive power by increasing the size of the locomotive, which put additional wear on the track, and as a result in 1864 he patented a double-ended steam locomotive mounted on two powered bogies. His first practical ‘Fairlie’ was the 2ft gauge Little Wonder, which performed so well on its trails on the Festiniog Railway in 1869 that it gained publicity throughout the world.

He advocated 3ft gauge articulated ‘Fairlie’ locomotives as a means of providing railways in the undeveloped countries, but while visiting Venezuela to promote a project; he caught a fever and became an invalid.

Fay, Sir Sam, 1856-1953

Fay joined the London & South Western Railway in 1872 and by 1881 was an assistant storekeeper. He launched the South Western Gazette with two colleagues and in 1881 published a short history of the company, A Royal Road. He was seconded to the Midland & South Western Junction Railway on its bankruptcy in 1892, and by 1897, the company was restored to solvency, with one contemporary observer noting that he had ‘made an empty sack sit upright’.

On returning to the LSWR, he was appointed superintendent of the line in 1899, but in 1902, he moved to the Great Central Railway, which was in a parlous financial position. Fay once again developed the railway, using its central position for through cross-country traffic while working with the Metropolitan and Great Western Railways to develop suburban traffic in London. Fay was a pioneer of conciliation boards to reduce the problem of industrial disputes. He was largely responsible for the GCR’s new port at Immingham on the Humber. He was knighted in 1912. During the First World War, he worked at the War Office from 1917 to 1919. He left the railways on grouping in 1923 and moved into locomotive manufacturing with Beyer Peacock at Manchester.

Fenchurch Street

The smallest railway terminus in London, it was originally built for the London & Blackwall Railway in 1841, but rebuilt in 1854 by George Berkeley. Originally it had four platforms, but after the railway was acquired by the Great Eastern, a fifth was added. The London & North Eastern Railway remodelled the station between 1932 and 1935, but most of the trains were operated by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway, which had acquired the London, Tilbury & Southern Railway under the 1923 grouping. The line was electrified in 1967, and in 1987, a large office block was built over the station. The Docklands Light Railway now occupies two of the platforms.

Fenton, Sir Myles, 1830-1918

Appointed as a clerk on the Kendal & Windermere Railway at the age of 15, Fenton moved through posts at four other railways before becoming secretary of the East Lancashire Railway at just 24. This surprising mobility and the experience gained enabled him to become operating superintendent of the Metropolitan Railway when just 32 in 1862, and general manager a year later. One of his achievements came in 1866, when he introduced the first feeder bus services to a London underground line. When the chairman, John Parson, was forced to resign and Sir Edward Watkin took over, Fenton became involved in his plans to use the MR as the link between the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire (predecessor of the Great Central) and the South Eastern to form a through service between Manchester and Dover, and possibly beyond as Watkin was an advocate of the Channel Tunnel, and also in the eternal disputes between the MR and the Metropolitan District Railway.

His next task was as general manager of the SER where he found himself embroiled in that company’s uneasy relationship with the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, as well as having to improve the performance and reputation of the SER itself. He managed to win the support of the King of the Belgians to stop the Dover-Ostend ferry service being switched to Harwich, a Great Eastern Railway port.

Fenton played a major role in planning for the use of the railways and their ports for wartime troop movements and was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Engineer & Railway Volunteer Staff Corps, but retired in 1896, before the Boer War or the First World War, in both of which the railways played a major role. In 1889, he was the first serving senior railwayman to be knighted.

Ferries and Shipping Services

Railway involvement with ‘ferries’ took two forms: the first being the operation of ferries across rivers and estuaries; the second shipping services between the mainland of Great Britain and the Isle of Wight, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands or the near Continent. These latter operations are sometimes referred to as shipping services. The railways, as owners and operators of ports, also became owners of tugs and dredgers, amongst other vessels necessary for the efficient functioning of a port.

At first, the railway companies were not allowed to operate ferries for fear that they might compete unfairly with the established operators. The attraction of a connecting shipping service for operations to Ireland and across the English Channel nevertheless were such that the railway companies merely sought to by-pass the law through subsidiary or associated shipping companies. The London & South Western Railway was involved with the South Western Steam Navigation Company, founded in 1842, and the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway went further, with a wholly-owned subsidiary, the Brighton & Continental Steam Packet Company, in 1847. The LBSCR’s duplicity was exposed by its rivals and within two years the steam packet operation ceased trading. Meanwhile, the railway companies were allowed to seek parliamentary approval for steamer services provided that they were for specific routes. So in 1848, the LSWR gained authority to operate to Le Havre in Normandy and to the Channel Islands. In 1863, all railway companies could operate passenger steamers provided that they sought authorisation for specific routes. Slightly different conditions applied to cargo services.

Rivers and estuaries

Ferries across the rivers and great estuaries were important because of the delay in building bridges and tunnels. Indeed, on the River Dart, the railway never reached Dartmouth, although the Great Western did maintain the ferry terminus as a ‘station’.

At first, the railway companies did not have powers to operate ferry services, and those across the Mersey at Birkenhead and at Hull for the Humber were acquired without the necessary authority and had to be sold to independent contractors. It was not until 1847 that parliamentary powers were gained for ferries across the Severn, Forth and Tay. That across the Forth was the world’s first train ferry and started operations in 1850 by the Edinburgh & Northern Railway, predecessor of the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway. Designed by Thomas Bouch, the ferry took wagons from Granton, just outside Edinburgh, to Burntisland on the southern coast of Fife. Next was the ferry across the Tay, and after the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879, it had to be reinstated until the replacement bridge was completed in 1887.

The early train ferries across the Firth of Forth in 1850, and the Tay the following year, had carriages and wagons loading using moving ramps onto wagon decks fitted with rails. Other train ferries included one by the LBSCR from Langstone to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. The Scottish train ferries were abandoned as soon as the bridges were opened, while the Bembridge route also had a short life span.

On the Severn, the ferry from the New Passage at Portskewett operated in conjunction with the railway to offer a fast journey between Bristol and Cardiff, but was closed as soon as the Severn Tunnel opened in 1886.

By the late nineteenth century, the remaining railway ferries were across the Humber to New Holland; from Kingswear to Dartmouth, opened in 1864; and from Tilbury to Gravesend, opened in 1875. The last two continue to run, although no longer in railway ownership.

The railway companies also became involved with ferries on the River Clyde and to the islands, building an extensive network. For some reason, there was delay in allowing the railway companies to operate their own ships, so here the companies used contracted operators until the Caledonian Railway, refused powers to operate ships in 1889, established the Caledonian Steam Packet Company, predecessor of today’s Caledonian MacBrayne, which operated most of the services to the Western Isles. Elsewhere in Scotland, to encourage tourism the railways operated steamers on Loch Lomond and other lochs.

Cross-Channel and Irish Sea operations

One major difference appeared as the railways became involved in ferries across the English Channel, the Irish Sea and the North Sea. The traditional shipping lines serving these routes had tried to operate between the major cities at either end. For example, Burns & Laird operated between Glasgow and Belfast, while the Belfast Steamship Company operated between Liverpool and Belfast: both later became subsidiaries of Coast Lines and, eventually, of P&O. By contrast, the railways looked for the shortest possible sea crossing and provided railway connections at either end, if necessary with a company on the other side, as the Great Western did with its services to the south of Ireland. Few of the old shipping company routes have survived as the emphasis has been for the shortest possible crossing, and while many of the railway routes have, but today passengers with their cars are the main market rather than rail-borne traffic.

Once allowed the necessary powers, the railways wasted little time in using them. The first official railway ferry service was that of the Great Grimsby & Sheffield Junction Railway, a predecessor of the Great Central, in 1846, between Hull and New Holland, although the latter did not get its railway connection until 1847. In 1848, the Chester & Holyhead Railway obtained powers for a service from Holyhead to Kingstown (now renamed Dun Laoghaire) in Ireland. The South Eastern Railway obtained powers in 1853 for a service between Folkestone and Boulogne.

During the First World War, the British Army started a train ferry service across the English Channel, from Richborough in Kent, but this port was rejected when the Southern Railway decided to introduce through sleeping car services between London and Paris with the ‘Night Ferry’ train from Victoria, which started in 1936: goods wagons were also carried on the three ships. Before this, the London & North Eastern Railway introduced a goods train ferry between Harwich and Zeebrugge in 1924.

Given the means of loading and unloading railway rolling stock, it is hard to believe that the early arrangements for loading motor cars consisted of the cars being craned aboard the ship while the driver had to board along with other foot passengers. When the Southern Railway damaged his car, a certain Captain Townsend was so incensed that he set up his own company, which later became Townsend Thoresen and ultimately European Ferries. The first roll-on/roll-off ferry, as they are known to shipping companies (but drive-on, to the travelling public) was the Princess Victoria, introduced to the Larne-Stranraer route of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway in 1939, but it was not until 1952 that such a vessel entered service on the Channel services when the Lord Warden started to ploy between Dover and Boulogne, and even then, she could not operate as such until a linkspan was completed at Dover the following year.

In both world wars, the railway ferries were taken up by the Royal Navy for a variety of duties. Many, railway and otherwise, were converted into seaplane carriers in the earlier conflict, while in the Second World War, some were used as minesweepers. Only on the Irish Sea and Isle of Wight services was any kind of service maintained during the Second World War, and in the First World War the main ports and routes were closed to civilian traffic. Especially during the Second World War, many former railway ferries were lost whilst acting as troopships or hospital ships. Early in the war, many ferries, especially those of the Southern Railway, assisted in the evacuation at Dunkirk, and in bringing civilians away from the Channel Islands.

While the ferries were standardised as far as possible, there was a considerable difference between the small ferries used on the half-hour crossing between Portsmouth and Ryde, and the overnight ferries across the North Sea and the Irish Sea, and on some of the longer Channel crossings, such as Southampton to Le Havre, which had overnight accommodation. Day and night ferries had accommodation divided into classes, although this practice was abandoned on the shorter crossings much earlier and was withdrawn on the longer crossings in the 1960s. As a rule, railway ferries were fast ships, with speeds of 18 to 21 knots, and on some routes, such as Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire, 25 knots was usual.

It was usual for the railway companies to combine their ferry services. This was done on the Channel Island services to avoid dangerous competition at first, but the practice also occurred elsewhere. In any event, shipping practice was often to operate regular services as a ‘conference’; in railway terminology this meant a joint service.

Nationalisation saw the shipping services passed to British Railways, which continued their development, especially as while the railway’s fortunes declined, those of the shipping services improved with the growth in paid holidays and of continental travel. The North Sea services were an exception to this, once North Sea Ferries introduced a new service from Hull. BR entered into collaborative operations with European railways, especially SNCF or France. The British Railways Act 1967 authorised the nationalised railway to operate any kind of shipping service anywhere, while in 1970, the ferry services were rebranded as Sealink, as were those of the French and Belgian railways. A hovercraft operating subsidiary was established at Dover as Seaspeed. When non-core businesses of British Rail started to be sold off, the ferry services were amongst the first to go, with Sealink being sold in 1984 to the US-based Sea Containers.

Festiniog Railway

Authorised by Parliament in 1832 to construct a line from the harbour at Portmadoc to the slate quarries at Blaenau Festiniog, the 13¼ mile Festiniog Railway was the first of the narrow gauge lines and was built to a gauge of 1ft 11½ inches. Work started in 1833 and the line was opened in 1836. The line required extensive engineering works and costs would almost certainly have been prohibitive had it been built to standard gauge, with the line running for some distance on a narrow shelf cut into a hillside, and spanning deep ravines on narrow stone embankments 600 feet high in some places, and with two tunnels.

At first, the line was worked by horses and gravity working, with the first steam locomotives not introduced until 1863, and passenger traffic started as early as 1850, possibly earlier. Between the two world wars, growing competition from road transport saw passenger services suspended in winter. The company remained independent, but operations were suspended in 1946, and not restarted until taken over by a preservation society in 1954.

Forth Railway Bridge

Often simply referred to as the ‘Forth Bridge’, the bridge was needed to enable trains from the south to run through to Dundee and Aberdeen, replacing the train ferry introduced in 1850. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, a succession of proposals were made for bridges across the Firth of Forth, and it was not until 1878 that William Arrol started work on Bouch’s stiffened suspension bridge. Work stopped immediately after the Tay Bridge disaster in 1879, although the Forth Bridge was not officially abandoned until 1881.

With Bouch discredited, it was not surprising that Sir John Fowler and Benjamin Baker were commissioned in 1881 to build their design consisting of three double cantilevers with suspended spans in between. This design was refined into the present bridge, with main spans of 1,700ft, which at the time made it the greatest bridge in the world. In reacting to the Tay disaster, the new bridge was designed to resist a wind force of 56 lbs per square foot, and is widely regarded as being overcautious in design, but it can safely accommodate trains many times heavier than those running at the time it was completed. William Arrol remained as contractor.

With the North British Railway crippled by the loss of the Tay Bridge, it was joined by the Great Northern, North Eastern and Midland Railways in building the bridge as joint shareholders in the Forth Bridge Company, although the NBR worked the trains once the project was completed in 1890.

Famous for many years for the team of painters who had to start re-painting the bridge whenever they had just finished, in recent years more modern paint technology has been applied and there will be periods when painting is not being done at all. Unfortunately, modern health and safety conditions mean that whenever painting is necessary, the parts being worked on are cocooned, spoiling the visual impact of the bridge.

Fowler, Sir Henry, 1870-1938

After serving an apprenticeship at the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway’s Horwich works under John Aspinall, Fowler joined the Midland Railway in 1900, and was promoted to assistant works manager at Derby in 1905, before becoming works manager in 1907. He became chief mechanical engineer in 1909 and retained this position until grouping, being knighted for his services to the railways during the First World War. In 1923, he became deputy CME for the London, Midland & Scottish Railway and became their CME from 1925 until he retired in 1930.

At the LMS, he struggled to integrate the design, locomotive and carriage construction and repair policies of six major companies. Nevertheless, he had considerable experience in workshop management and in improving productivity in both railway and government workshops. He had already organised line production for locomotive overhauls, reducing the time needed, while standardising components and eliminating small locomotive classes or those that offered reliability or maintenance problems, also boosted productivity and reduced costs. His plans for 4-6-2 passenger and 2-8-2 freight locomotives were overruled by train operators because of the need for larger turntables. Nevertheless, he was responsible for the Royal Scot 4-6-0s built between 1927 and 1930, although Sir William Stanier, his successor, had them rebuilt.

In retirement, he was a consultant to the LMS vice-president (research) and authorised the introduction of prototype diesel shunting locomotives, with the LMS introducing these on a large scale by the time the Second World War broke out in 1939.

Fowler, Sir John, 1817-1898

After early experience with J T Leather and J U Rastrick, the engineers, he became engineer for the Stockton & Hartlepool Railway in 1841, and was then appointed the company’s general manager, becoming one of the few Victorian engineers with operational experience.

He then worked on lines in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, including those which later became part of the Great Central Railway’s predecessor, the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire, and the Great Northern. After moving to London in 1844, in 1852 he became engineer for the Oxford Worcester & Wolverhampton, later a component part of the West Midland Railway. He was engineer for both the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways from 1853, and then became engineer or consultant for most of the London Underground railways under construction before his death, as well as for the Great Western after Brunel died, and for the GNR, Cheshire Lines and the Highland Railway, as well as a number of railways abroad. His advice was sought for a number of major termini, including Glasgow St Enoch, Liverpool Central, London Victoria, including Grosvenor Bridge, and for many bridges, including the first concrete bridge at Torksey. His most famous work was with Sir Benjamin Baker, the Forth Bridge. He was knighted in 1885.

Fox, Sir Charles, 1810-1874; Sir Charles Douglas, 1840-1921; Sir Francis, 1844-1927.

Turning his back on the medical profession, Charles Fox was apprenticed to John Ericsson in 1829 and worked on the locomotive Novelty, for the Rainhill trials, after which he joined Robert Stephenson. In 1838, he became a partner of Joseph Bramah at his Smethwick iron foundry, which became Fox Henderson & Co from 1841. He invented and patented a switch. His company became a leading contractor on structural ironwork, providing the structure of the Crystal Palace as well as station roofs at Paddington and Birmingham New Street, and many iron bridges, as well as becoming railway contractors, building the East Kent, which became part of the London, Chatham & Dover (see South Eastern & Chatham Railway), and lines in Denmark, France and Germany.

Despite this activity and a sound reputation, the company went bankrupt in 1856, after which Fox became a consultant, being joined by his sons Douglas in 1860 and Francis in 1861. Together, they worked on the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the Great Central extension to London, the Mersey railway tunnel and the Battersea railway approach, and were engineers for both the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead and the Great Northern & City underground railways in London. Abroad, they designed lines in Australia, Canada, Africa and South America.

Freshwater, Yarmouth & Newport Railway – see Isle of Wight

Furness Railway

This had its origins in an isolated line built in 1846 to move iron ore and slate from the Furness peninsula to the docks at Barrow in-Furness, but a series of take-overs and extensions resulted in a line from Carnforth to Whitehaven, opened in 1857, with branches into the Lake District and connecting steamer services on Lake Windermere and Coniston Water. In 1862, it acquired the Ulverston & Lancaster Railway. The company initially prospered with the steel and shipbuilding industry, but during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, its promotion of tourism brought it great benefits until it became part of the London, Midland & Scottish in 1923.