William and Edward Walton Chapman

Forward (Trans. Newcomen Soc., 28, 1, and a key reference) notes that William Chapman was born in 1749 and died in 1832. Furthermore, Forward considered that Chapman may have been involved with experiments involving locomotives as early as 1805, with the Trevithick "Tyneside locomotive". According to Lowe and to Warren, William Chapman was the inventor of the bogie and of the articulated locomotive. A competent civil engineer, in 1812 he devised a locomotive that would haul itself along on a chain between the rails. The basic idea failed, but in order to distribute the weight Chapman supported his machine on a primitive form of swivelling truck, or bogie. In 1814 at Lambton Colliery in Northumberland such a locomotive on two four-wheeled trucks was hauling 54 ton loads without the assistance of any chain. The gearing which transmitted the drive to the wheels allowed the latter a degree of sideplay. With this eight-wheel machine, it was possible to use steam haulage without the laying of heavier rails.

Rutherford's Heroes, villains and ordinary men. BackTrack 9, 528. noted that William Chapman was a well-educated, established consulting engineer who had designed coal drops which minimized coal breakage and was responsible for the harbour at Seaham Colliery.

Skempton records that William Chapman was a major civil engineer involved in canals in Ireland, improvements to river navigations (the Orwell in 1806), major land drainage schemes in Holderness and the Vale of Pickering and in the consruction of bridges. He was involved in the early stages of the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway. His brother Edward Walton and William were involved in improving rope-making machinery and Edward ran a successful rope manufactory at Willington. The Chapmans invented self-acting machinery or loweing coal waggons from staiths into ships.

Forward notes that John Buddle (1773-1843) was in partnership with Chapman. Lowe states that the later locomotive was built by Phineas Crowther. He also refers to C.F. Dendy Marshall's contribution to The Engineer (14 September 1936) and to his Early British Locomotives concerning Chapman's six-wheel bogie engines and to R.N. Appleby-Miller's contribution to The Engineer (18 September 1931) concerning a second Chapman locomotive with eight wheels. Winifred Stokes in Early Railways 3 notes the importance of Buddle as a colliery viewer in developing steam locomotion. He was also in introducing steam traction on Cape Breton Island: see Herb MacDonasld in Early Railways 3..

Patent

[Bogie] 3,632 21 April 1812. Forward gives the date as 30 December 1812 and Edward Walton Chapman as co-inventor.

See: Forward. Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 28, page 1 and C.F. Dendy Marshall.
Skempton, A.W. William Chapman (1749-1832), Civil Engineer (Eleventh Dickinson Memorial Lecture). Trans Newcomen Soc., 1973, 46, 45-82.

Crowther, Phineas
C.F. Dendy Marshall noted that the Chapman locomotive was constructed by Crowther at the Ouseburn Foundry.

2008-10-18