Steam locomotive Agenoria 0-4-0, named after the Roman goddess of industry, and built by Foster Rastrick & Co, Stourbridge in 1829. Dimensions: length over buffers, 13' 3"; width 6' 1"; height 24"; weight 11 tons with tender; area 7.19m square. Driving wheel diameter 4 feet, 0 3/4 inches. Weight: 11 tons with tender (details from the Science Museum website; photograph © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum. Click on the image to enlarge it).
Agenoria was used to pull coal waggons for the Earl of Dudley's Shut(t) End Colliery Railway at Kingswinford, Staffordshire, until 1864. This work was typical of the first phase of railway development, before railway transport was envisaged as a means of conveying passengers (see Nock 1). But by the 1860s, that had completely changed, and technology had advanced so much that the locomotive, rediscovered and repaired, was already quite a museum piece, or at least an exhibition piece. It was even shown at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Agenoria still serves that function: it is currently displayed in the Great Hall of the National Railway Museum.
Itself one of the first locomotives ever made, it has an interesting link to the very first locomotive that ran in America, the Stourbridge Lion — this famous steam engine was one of only four produced by the same company. Like Robert Stephenson's America, it was sent out to the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company in 1829. As for John Urpeth Rastrick, he left his partnership with James Foster in 1831 and struck out on his own account, aa an independent civil engineeer who contributed tirelessly and enormously to the developement of the early railways.
Image released by the Science Museum Group under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Licence. Text by Jacqueline Banerjee.
Bibliography
Nock, O. S. The Dawn of World Railways, 1800-1850. London: Macmillan, 1972.
Shutt End Colliery Railway steam locomotive Agenoria. Science Museum Group. Web. 20 March 2024.
Created 20 March 2024