William Adams(15 October 1823–7 August 1904) was an English railway engineer. He was the Locomotive Superintendent of the North London Railway from 1858-1873 where he introduced his noted series of 4-4-0 tank engines, the first to use the laterally-sprung bogie, and the first continuous train brake; the Great Eastern Railway from 1873-1878 where his refitting of the company's Stratford works using modern, standardised equipment saved the company money, and then he worked at the London and South Western Railway from 1878 until his retirement in 1895. He is best known for his locomotives featuring the Adams bogie,a device with lateral centring springs (initially made of rubber) to improve high-speed stability. He was born in Mill Place, Limehouse, London, where his father was the resident engineer of the nearby East and West India Docks Company. After private schooling in Margate, he was apprenticed to his father's works. The railway surveyor Charles Vignoles had previously worked on the construction of the London dock basins, and this association then secured a position for Adams as an assistant in his drawing office. The final years of apprenticeship were spent at the Orchard Wharf works of Miller & Ravenhill, builders of engines for steamships.In 1848 Adams became assistant works manager for Philip Taylor, an ironfounder, millwright and former assistant to Marc Brunel, who had set up workshops in Marseilles and Genoa to build and install marine engines.Fluent in French and Italian, Adams soon found himself effectively the superintendent engineer for the Royal Sardinian Navy, although still nominally working for Taylor. In 1852, he wed Isabella Park, the daughter of another English millwright working in Genoa, and returned to England.On the LSWR he designed 524 locomotives, supervised the expansion of Nine Elms Works and the transfer of the Carriage and Wagon Works to Eastleigh.Failing health forced his retirement on 29 May 1895. He lived in Putney until his death on 7 August 1904. William was a Renaissance man who ensured his designs were built to last.He was a good planner.His sons subsequently became engineers.

John Woodhams’ William Adams: His Life and Locomotives clearly shows the enormous amount of research Woodhams has performed. Adams was Locomotive Foreman at the North London Railway; Locomotive Superintendent at the Great Eastern Railway; and Locomotive and Carriage Superintendent at the London and South Western Railway. He is best known for that last role, designing locomotives for the LSWR and, as Woodhams mentions, could be considered the “father of the suburban train”.

One reason that Adams’ suburban services were so successful was his espousal of the continuous brake. That enabled tighter timetabling of suburban services with frequent stops. He also pioneered the use of coal gas for lighting carriages. If you commute by train and read your newspaper while you do so in winter, thank William Adams! Adams’ designs were simple and the longevity of his locomotives was impressive, possibly because of that. Woodhams is keen to tell us when the last example of each Adams design ceased running. Adams started work when horse shunting was standard. In 1883, one of his designs was expected to replace ten horses and five men; and his last locomotive in commercial service (that is, used on a daily basis rather than displayed with reverence on a heritage railway) ceased work in 1972. Just pause and think about that: a Victorian machine, initially praised for replacing ten horses, was being used to move hundreds of tons of stuff in the seventies when some of us reading this were adults – Adams really does merit some applause…

The book is a lovely mash-up of railway history (in which I am very interested) and detailed locomotive history (which leaves me cold!). Woodhams tells us more about cylinder bore sizes and driving wheel diameters than I ever wished to know, but I accept that technical improvements, such as those made by Adams, contributed to the acceptance and usage of railways as the favourite means of commuting (not a word used by Victorians). There are times, though, when the reader wonders why Adams is so lauded? For example, his first 2-6-0s were “heavy on coal consumption” and the entire class of locos were withdrawn after only six to eight years of service. I noted, later in the book, that some engines were “too heavy for certain duties”. The book is very even-handed, but could perhaps make a more explicit case for Adams' genius.

I was unconvinced that Adams could provide enough material for a biography of approximately 200 pages; and one suspects Woodhams has thrown in all the facts he discovered, whether or not they’re really relevant to the story of William Adams. One example is Urie’s appointment as the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LSWR in 1912, eight years after Adams’ death. That is not to say the facts are uninteresting, nor that I’m sorry they’re in the book; just that they might be considered tangential to understanding Adams’ story. There is also a little too much jumping forwards in time and then back again. Neither of those criticisms are serious flaws, but they do sometimes puzzle the reader.

Oh, and even if all you want to know are the cylinder sizes and wheel diameters, I’m sure that the fact William and Isabella Adams had ten children will drag your attention away from the technology for a minute…

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