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Charles Fox (civil And Railway Engineer)
Sir Charles Fox (11 March 1810 – 11 June 1874) was an English civil engineer and contractor. His work focused on railways, railway stations and bridges. Biography Born in Derby in 1810, Charles Fox was the youngest of five sons of Dr. Francis Fox. Initially trained to follow his father's career, he abandoned medical training at age 19 and became articled to John Ericsson, working with him and John Braithwaite on the ''Novelty'' locomotive, which he drove in the Rainhill trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He acquired a taste for locomotive driving and was employed on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, being present at its opening. In 1830, Fox married Mary, second daughter of Joseph Brookhouse, by whom he had three sons and a daughter. Two of his sons, Francis Fox and Charles Douglas Fox, also became engineers. Railways One of his earliest inventions, patented in 1838, was railway points, which superseded the sliding rail used up to that time. In 1837 R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derby
Derby ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area on the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire is named after Derby, which was its original county town. As a unitary authority, Derby is administratively independent from Derbyshire County Council. The population of Derby is (). The Romans established the town of Derventio Coritanorum, Derventio, which was later captured by the Anglo-Saxons and then by the Vikings who made one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw. Initially a market town, Derby grew rapidly in the industrial era and was home to Lombe's Mill, an early British factory and it contains the southern part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. With the arrival of the railways in the 19th century, Derby became a centre of the Rail transport in Great Britain, British rail industry. Despite having a Derby Cathedral, cathedral since 1927, Derby did not gain City ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Fox (civil Engineer)
Sir Francis Fox (29 June 1844 – 7 January 1927) was an English civil engineer, who was responsible for the bridges over the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi and Sydney Harbour, the Mersey Railway Tunnel and the Liverpool Overhead Railway, and extending the London Underground. He was awarded a Knighthood by the King on 25 July 1912. Biography Born in Derby, England, he was one of three sons of the noted engineer and contractor Sir Charles Fox. Educated at Highgate School, Brighton College and Tonbridge School, he entered into business with his father and his brother Charles Douglas in 1857. In 1860 the three formed a partnership, the firm being known as Sir Charles Fox and Sons. In 1871 he designed the Telescopic Bridge in Bridgwater. Fox was also a consultant for the Simplon Tunnel and in 1878 constructed the replacement train shed at Bristol Temple Meads railway station. He became an engineer for the Great Central Railway and, in 1889, collaborated with his brother Dougl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Railway Track
Railway track ( and UIC terminology) or railroad track (), also known as permanent way () or "P way" ( and Indian English), is the structure on a railway or railroad consisting of the rails, fasteners, sleepers ( railroad ties in American English) and ballast (or slab track), plus the underlying subgrade. It enables trains to move by providing a dependable, low-friction surface on which steel wheels can roll. Early tracks were constructed with wooden or cast-iron rails, and wooden or stone sleepers. Since the 1870s, rails have almost universally been made from steel. Historical development The first railway in Britain was the Wollaton wagonway, built in 1603 between Wollaton and Strelley in Nottinghamshire. It used wooden rails and was the first of about 50 wooden-railed tramways built over the subsequent 164 years. These early wooden tramways typically used rails of oak or beech, attached to wooden sleepers with iron or wooden nails. Gravel or small stones were pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renfrew
Renfrew (; ; ) is a town west of Glasgow in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It is the historic county town of Renfrewshire. Called the "Cradle of the Royal Stewarts" for its early link with Scotland's former royal house, Renfrew gained royal burgh status in 1397. As the county town, Renfrew once was a centre of local government for the surrounding area. Whilst the county remained known as "Renfrewshire", the focus of local government gradually shifted from Renfrew to its larger neighbour Paisley. Following the reorganisation of 1996, Renfrewshire was divided for local government purposes into three modern council areas: Renfrewshire, with considerably smaller boundaries than the old county, including Renfrew and with its administrative centre at Paisley; Inverclyde with its centre at Greenock, covering the western part of the county; and East Renfrewshire, with its centre at Giffnock. The boundaries of the historic County of Renfrew remain for a number of ceremoni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smethwick
Smethwick () is an industrial town in the Sandwell district, in the county of the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It lies west of Birmingham city centre. Historically it was in Staffordshire and then Worcestershire before being placed into West Midlands county. In 2019, the ward of Smethwick had an estimated population of 15,246, while the wider built-up area subdivision has a population of 53,653. History It was suggested that the name Smethwick meant "smiths' place of work", but a more recent interpretation has suggested the name means "the settlement on the smooth land". Smethwick was recorded in the Domesday Book as ''Smedeuuich'', the ''d'' in this spelling being the Anglo-Saxon letter eth. Until the end of the 18th century it was an outlying hamlet of the south Staffordshire village of Harborne. Harborne became part of the county borough of Birmingham and thus transferred from Staffordshire to Warwickshire in 1891, leaving Smethwick in the County of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in ''Principles of Biology'' (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species''. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. Riggenbach, Jeff (24 April 2011The Real William Graham Sumner, Mises Institute. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolutionism, evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology, and psychology. During h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, including Henry Cavendish and its first president, George Finch. Its foundational principles were diffusing the knowledge of, and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, as well as enhancing the application of science to the common purposes of life (including through teaching, courses of philosophical lectures, and experiments). Much of the Institution's initial funding and the initial proposal for its founding were given by the Society for Bettering the Conditions and Improving the Comforts of the Poor, under the guidance of philanthropist Sir Thomas Bernard and American-born British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Since its founding it has been based at 21 Albemarle Stree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skew Arch
A skew arch (also known as an oblique arch) is a method of construction that enables an arch bridge to span an obstacle at some angle other than a right angle. This results in the faces of the arch not being perpendicular to its abutments and its plan view being a parallelogram, rather than the rectangle that is the plan view of a regular, or "square" arch. In the case of a masonry skew arch, the construction requires precise stonemasonry, stonecutting, as the cuts do not form right angles, but once the principles were fully understood in the early 19th century, it became considerably easier and cheaper to build a skew arch of brick. The problem of building skew arch masonry bridges was addressed by a number of early civil engineers and mathematicians, including Giovanni Barbara (1726), William Chapman (engineer), William Chapman (1787), Benjamin Outram (1798), Peter Nicholson (architect), Peter Nicholson (1828), George Stephenson (1830), Edward Sang (1835), Charles Fox (civil a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euston Railway Station
Euston railway station ( ; or London Euston) is a major London station group, central London railway terminus and Euston tube station, connected London Underground station managed by Network Rail in the London Borough of Camden. It is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line, the UK's busiest inter-city railway. Euston is the List of busiest railway stations in Great Britain, tenth-busiest station in Britain and the country's busiest inter-city passenger terminal, being the gateway from London to the West Midlands (region), West Midlands, North West England, North Wales and Scotland. Intercity express passenger services to the major cities of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and through services to for connecting ferries to Dublin are operated by Avanti West Coast. Overnight sleeper services to Scotland are provided by the Caledonian Sleeper. West Midlands Trains, London Northwestern Railway provide commuter and regional services to the West M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camden Town
Camden Town () is an area in the London Borough of Camden, around north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London. Laid out as a residential district from 1791 and originally part of the manor of Kentish Town, Camden Town became an important location during the early development of the railways, which reinforced its position on the Blue Ribbon Network, London canal network. The area's industrial economic base has been replaced by service industries such as retail, tourism and entertainment. The area now hosts street markets and music venues associated with alternative culture. History Toponymy Camden Town is named after Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. His earldom was styled after his estate, Chislehurst#Camden Place, Camden Place near Chislehurst in Kent (now in the London Borough of Bromley), formerly owned by historian William Camden. The name, which appears on the Ordnance Surve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London And Birmingham Railway
The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, in operation from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR). The railway line which the company opened in 1838, between London and Birmingham, was the first intercity line to be built into London. It is now the southern section of the West Coast Main Line. The line was engineered by Robert Stephenson. It started at Euston Station in London, went north-west to Rugby, where it turned west to Coventry and on to Birmingham. It terminated at Curzon Street Station, which it shared with the Grand Junction Railway (GJR), whose adjacent platforms gave an interchange with full connectivity (with through carriages) between Liverpool, Manchester and London. History Early plans As early as 1823, a company was formed with the objective of building a railway between London and Birmingham, and in 1826, the engineer John Rennie surveyed a route through Oxford and B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson , (honoris causa, Hon. causa) (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father. Robert has been called the greatest engineer of the 19th century. Stephenson's death was widely mourned, and his funeral afforded marks of public honour. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Early life Robert Stephenson was born on 16 October 1803, at Willington Quay, east of Newcastle upon Tyne, to George Stephenson and Frances ( Henderson), usually known as Fanny. She was twelve years older than George, and when they met she was working as a servant where George was lodging. After marrying, George and Fanny lived in an upper room of a cottage; George worked as a brakesman on the Stationary steam engine, stationary winding engine on the Quay, and in his spare time he cleaned and mended clocks and repaired shoes.In 1804, George bec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
