John Lambie was a

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

engineer. He was born in

Saltcoats Saltcoats (; Scots: ''Saulcuts'') is a town on the west coast of North Ayrshire, Scotland. The name is derived from the town's earliest industry when salt was harvested from the sea water of the Firth of Clyde, carried out in small cottages ...

Ayrshire Ayrshire (, ) is a Counties of Scotland, historic county and registration county, in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. The lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area of Ayrshire and Arran covers the entirety ...

, on 29 October 1833 and died in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

on 1 February 1895. He was

Locomotive Superintendent Chief mechanical engineer and locomotive superintendent are titles applied by British, Australian, and New Zealand railway companies to the person ultimately responsible to the board of the company for the building and maintaining of the locomotive ...

of the

Caledonian Railway The Caledonian Railway (CR) was one of the two biggest of the five major Scottish railway companies prior to the 1923 Grouping. It was formed in 1845 with the objective of forming a link between English railways and Glasgow. It progressively ex ...

from 1891 to 1895.

Career

John Lambie became Locomotive Superintendent of the Caledonian Railway on 1 April 1891. He came from a railway background as his father had been Traffic Manager of the

Wishaw and Coltness Railway The Wishaw and Coltness Railway was an early Scottish mineral railway. It ran for approximately from Chapel Colliery, at Newmains in North Lanarkshire connecting to the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway near Whifflet, giving a means of transpor ...

until it was absorbed by the Caledonian Railway in 1848.

Innovations

John Lambie improved conditions for enginemen by fitting cab doors, better handrails and footsteps to locomotives. He improved on

Dugald Drummond Dugald Drummond (1 January 1840 – 8 November 1912) was a Scottish steam locomotive engineer. He had a career with the North British Railway, LB&SCR, Caledonian Railway and London and South Western Railway. He was the older brother of the eng ...

4-4-0 4-4-0, in the Whyte notation, denotes a steam locomotive with a wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles (usually in a leading bogie), four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles, and no trailing wheels. First built in the ...

design in 1894 and he introduced

condensing steam locomotive A condensing steam locomotive is a type of locomotive designed to recover exhaust steam, either in order to improve range between taking on boiler water, or to reduce emission of steam inside enclosed spaces. The apparatus takes the exhaust ste ...

s of the 4-4-0T and

0-4-4T Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-4-4 represents the wheel arrangement of no leading wheels, four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles, and four trailing wheels on two axles. This type was only us ...

types for underground lines.

References

1833 births 1895 deaths British railway pioneers Scottish railway mechanical engineers People from Saltcoats Caledonian Railway people Locomotive builders and designers 19th-century Scottish businesspeople {{Scotland-engineer-stub

Career

Innovations

See also

References