Kirtley family

Thomas Kirtley
Thomas Kirtley was born in Tanfield in 1810 and died from a brain tumour in Brighton on 16 November 1847  where he was locomotive superintendent (Marshall). he had previously been locomotive superintendent of the North Midland Railway, founder of a locomotive building firm in Warrington and an engine driver on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway with his brother Matthew.

Matthew Kirtley
Matthew Kirtley was born at Tanfield in County Durham in February 1813, the son of a colliery owner. After a brief spell of tailoring, he joined the S&DR as a fireman in 1826, joined the L&MR briefly and became a driver on the Hull & Selby from where he was dismissed. Nevertheless, he is reputed to have driven the first L&BR train into London. In 1839 he was appointed Locomotive Foreman at Hampton on the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway, and two years later was made Locomotive Superintendent. Following the formation of the MR by amalgamation Kirtley becames its Locomotive Superintendent, probably through the influence of the Stephensons. Hunt: Backtrack, 17, 191

As first locomotive superintendent of the recently-formed Midland Railway, Matthew Kirtley's first task was to enlarge, improve, and standardize the ninety-odd locomotive stock handed down by the three constituent companies, while at the same time enlarging the facilities at Derby to enable the Company to become less dependent on outside enterprises both for the repair and the maintenance of its locomotives. His first locomotives followed previous patterns; for example, his first passenger machines were basically of the Jenny Lind type, but later in his career he built very sound locomotives of his own design; among these were his long lived 2-4-0 machines of the 800 class, and his double-framed 0-6-0, some of which survived until railway nationalization. In 1856, with C. Markham, Kirtley devised a firebox suitable for burning coal; this used the inclined brick-arch, later so well-known, with a deflector plate sloping downwards from the firedoor. By this means volatile matter escaping with the hot gases was combusted as it moved around the brick arch and mixed with air entering by the firedoor. Kirtley held office from 1844 to his death in 1873. Previously he had been locomotive superintendent of the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway, one of the constituents of the Midland. His brother Thomas Kirtley, who became locomotive superintendent of the LBSCR for a few months in 1847, was the last locomotive superintendent of another Midland constituent, the North Midland. There is a Matthew Kirtley Scholarship for the University of Manchester's School of Engineering: Sir Frederic Calland Williams won this in 1929..

See: J. B. Radford, Derby Works and Midland Locomotives (1971).

Patents

12210/1848 Railway-wheels. 11 July 1848

William Kirtley
Nephew of Matthew Kirtley of the Midland Railway. Marshall states that he was born in Warrington on 14 October 1849 and died in London on 7 October 1919. His father had owned a locomotive manufacturing business in Warrington, but this had failed prior to William's birth. William was a pupil at Derby under his uncle, from April 1854. He held several posts on the Midland, including that of foreman at the Midland depot in King's Cross and from January 1864 Workshops Superintendent at Derby until he was appointed Locomotive Carriage & Wagon Superintendent on the LCDR in succession to Martley. Bradley records that at the Board Meeting on 12 March 1874 four candidates had been considered: two (Appleby and Lindsley were rejected as lacking experience - the other was Sacré), and Kirtley was offered the post at £800 per annum. He designed a powerful 0-4-4T (R class) which Bradley considered to be the best suburban tank engines South of London. This very thorough engineer was a consultant to the Hull & Barnsley Railway between 1883 and 1885..

Webb, Ben: Locomotive Engineers of the Southern Railway. 1946.
Bradley, D.L.: The locomotive history of the London Chatham and Dover Railway. London: RCTS, 1979.

2007-01-05