Description
Sanspareil No.2 was built by Timothy Hackworth in 1849. It was named after the little engine he had entered into the Rainhill Trials in 1829. This is the last locomotive built by Timothy Hackworth and contained a number of technological innovations. The print is of the engine and also a longitudinal cross section through the engine.
The print is taken from two old drawings, the original prints are now in the Hackworth Family Archive. Whether you buy this as a framed and mounted set, or mounted only set, each one comes with a small card providing some background historical information on the engine featured and a Hackworth certificate of authenticity.
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Timothy Hackworth, the first S&DR engineer, built this locomotive when he was running his own business at his Soho Works in Shildon. He had long held an ambition to construct an engine that drew together all his relevant expertise in locomotive building and repair, but pressure of ordinary business prevented him from doing so until 1849 when he built “Sanspareil”.
It was a six-wheeled passenger engine, with inside cylinders, crank axle, single driving wheels 6ft 6 ins. diameter, and leading and training wheels each 4ft in diameter, all of solid wrought iron. It weighed a total of 23 tons 15 cwts., in working order.
It contained a number of novel features some of which were patented in the name of Timothy and John Wesley Hackworth (Patent No. 128892); in particular the passover valves, for the communicating motion from short stroked engines, by levers, to long cranked motions outside the wheels, for the circular form of the outer and inner cases of the firebox and for the mode of heating the water in tanks and supplying the condensed water to the boiler.
It was described in 1854 as “The example of construction now before us is a very beautiful one; indeed it is unrivalled as a specimen of this class of workmanship” (The Steam Engine, its History and Mechanism,” by R. S. Burn published in 1854, p159).
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