Samuel Waite Johnson

Dow observed the beautiful finish of Samuel W. Johnson's engines on the Midland Railway adding: Of his designs it has been truly said: 'The precision of a Breguet watch and the beauty and finish of an Adam house went into a Johnson engine on the Midland.., no locomotives now have a finish by Johnsonian standards'

Johnson was born in 14 October 1831 at Bramley, near Leeds, and died in Nottingham on 14 January 1912 (John Marshall). Radford (Derby Works and Midland locomotives p.119)  notes that he died after being knocked down by a runaway horse and trap. He learnt to be an engineer with E.B. Wilson & Co., locomotive builders, where he encountered Sturrock, as a result of which he joined the Great Northern. Westwood adds that Johnson's father was an engineer who would shortly join the Great Northern Railway. Following a grammar school education Johnson was supervised by James Fenton whilst apprenticed to the E. B. Wilson Company where he and must surely have made the acquaintance of David Joy who was working on the Jenny Lind, for which design the young Johnson helped with the drawings. In 1859 he became Acting Locomotive Superintendent of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, and in 1864 he was appointed Locomotive Superintendent of the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway. After two years north of the Border [the debacle surrounding his departure is described by Highet and quoted under Stroudley] he returned to England to succeed Robert Sinclair of the Great Eastern at Stratford Works. According to Thomas (North British) Johnson "took" five Neilson 2-4-0 express locomotives ordered for the E&GR to the ECR with him. Here, however, he remained for only seven years before moving on to Derby to take charge of the Locomotive Department of the Midland Railway, a post which was soon also to include the duties of Locomotive Engineer to the Somerset & Dorset Joint and Midland & Great Northern Joint Railways.

During his short period of office on the Great Eastern he initiated two notable designs, the first British 0-4-4 side-tank engine with inside frames, and the first English 4-4-0 express locomotive with inside frames and inside cylinders. Both types he repeated, with variations, on the Midland, and no less than 205 of the former were constructed between 1875 and 1900. Over sixty of them were still at work on L.M.S lines in 1948.

Johnson had no phobias where domes were concerned and, in consequence, his bogie single driver express engines, amongst the most beautiful locomotives the world has ever seen, were better-looking machines than the domeless creations of Stirling. At the same time Johnson took no chances and, until the end of the century, he provided every one of his engines with two Salter safety valves on the dome and a lock-up safety valve, concealed under an elegant brass casing, on the firebox. Like Patrick Stirling Johnson adopted the beautiful 4-2-2 arrangement and one of these is preserved as part of the National Collection..

Before retiring in 1904 Johnson had designed his greatest masterpiece, a 3-cylmder express locomotive on W.M. Smith's compound system. Five of these engines appeared between 1901 and 1903 and more, slightly modified, were built by his successors, R. M. Deeley and Henry Fowler. Altogether 240 were constructed, the most successful comounds ever to run on British metals, and, in  the author's opinion, the most handsome of all British 4-4-0s. They were numbered 900-939 and 1000-1199. At the November 1902 meeting of ARLE (as edited Hughes) Worsdell noted that the Americans had gone in strongly for compounds, but were now giving them up (this was in response to enthusiasm for developments in France as expressed by Johnson) and by Churchward noting the GWR purchase of a French compound..

Radford noted that Johnson was "fighting a battle against the constrictions of the 4ft 8½in gauge. He was firmly of the opinion that 5ft 3in would be an ideal gauge, and that the use of such wider gauge would have greatly reduced the difficulties countless Locomotive Superintendents experienced in crowding all the machinery into the space between the frames. This he observed limited the boiler diameter when the driving wheels were large, cramped the firebox width and unduly reduced the dimensions of the crank bearing surfaces and webs. The remark about limited boiler and firebox dimensions became particularly relevant when he introduced his renowned single wheelers"

Jack Simmons contributed a concise biography to the Oxford Companion, but Johnson is a major gap in the ODNB..

See: H. Ellis, Twenty locomotive men (1958).
Nock, O.S. Steam locomotive.
Radford, J.B.: Derby Works and Midland locomotives: the story of the works, its men, and the locomotives they built. 1971.
Nature of Johnson household in Nottingham from 1881 Census: Backtrack 14, 637. (includes a portrait)

2007-05-05