Butterley engineer invented steam horse

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Back in 1813, with the Napoleonic wars making horse fodder scarce, Butterley engineer William Brunton had an inspirational idea – why not use a mechanical horse? Maxwell Craven reports.

Not being a railway expert, myself, I do not often risk writing about them. However, November marked the 194th anniversary of another early locomotive: the first steam loco built and run in Derbyshire.

John Farey provides a tantalisingly brief record of this event in his 1817 book, Agriculture and Minerals of Derbyshire.

He describes the industrial tramways then appearing, including a “rail-way” that ran from limestone quarries in Crich through Fritchley to a wharf at Bull Bridge on the Cromford Canal. His account refers to the fact that the wagons or “trams” carrying the limestone on this line were usually horse-drawn.

He also records a remarkable experiment in November 1813 when a revolutionary new form of motive power was tried: steam.

This was an unusual locomotive, built to the design of Scottish engineer William Brunton, an apprentice at Arkwright’s New Lanark Mills before working for Boulton and Watt in Birmingham.

From 1808, however, he was employed at Butterley Ironworks, which produced track and equipment for early horse-worked railways.

Brunton’s idea was to create a “mechanical horse” that took the form of a steam boiler mounted on four wheels that propelled itself by means of two jointed iron legs, driven by steam cylinders and with enough power to pull wagons.

Today, we might think of Brunton’s invention, pictured left, as some bizarre Billy Bean machine. However, he was an experienced fellow, working at a time when engineers were trying all sorts of ways to harness steam power mechanically to haul loads. Some used cogs, chains or ropes to overcome the problem of getting enough friction from wheels on track to haul a load; Brunton used legs.

His theory was that if horses could pull wagons on railways with their legs, why could not a steam machine do it better?

He put his ideas on paper in a letter to his brother in April 1813, which survives in the collections at the National Railway Museum in York.

A month later, he registered patent no 3700. After that, the machine rapidly became a reality before the end of the year.

He had the boiler made at the Butterley works but built the locomotive as a self-funded project, independent of his work for the company. On completion, it was transported, presumably on the Cromford Canal, to Bull Bridge to be steamed and tried out on the quarry railway.

It weighed about 45cwt when full of water and had a wrought-iron boiler 5ft 6ins long and 3ft in diameter.

Remarkably, there are no known records of this pioneering event but Farey and others later comment that it was successful and that the machine saw regular use, although for how long is unclear.

The line must have tested the locomotive, as its one-and-a-quarter miles included gradients ranging from 1 in 80 to 1 in 50. Its success is evidenced by the fact that Brunton built a second engine at his own expense. It was larger and more powerful than the first and was delivered to the Newbottle Colliery, Co Durham, in October 1814.

There, it worked successfully, hauling coal trains at around 2.5 mph until 1815. On July 31 that year, it was unfortunately involved in the world’s first recorded railway disaster when it unexpectedly exploded, killing three people and injuring around 50 who had gathered to see its first run with a new, larger boiler. This seriously affected the reputation of Brunton’s remarkable mechanical horse and no further examples were built.

Brunton appears to have lost his interest in railway locomotives after that. By 1815, he had moved on to become a partner and engineering manager at the Eagle Foundry, Birmingham. His later career involved him in a variety of projects, including inventions for colliery ventilation which he exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851. He died in Cambourne, Cornwall, in 1855.

There is very little recorded about Derbyshire’s first steam locomotive. Do you know more? Are there stories passed down in your family? If so, do get in touch.

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