William Henry James
Born at Henley, England, March, 1776. Died at Dulwich College Alms House, December 16, 1873.
The father of William Henry James was William James, of Warwickshire, the great railway projector of his time. He was a solicitor in early life, but became wealthy, worked a colliery in South Staffordshire, and in 1815 removed to London, where he had a large land agency business. He became interested in tramways in 1806, and from that date on devoted most of his energies and fortune to projecting railways in the United Kingdom. He had an interest in one of George Stephenson’s patents, made numerous railway surveys, and by many has been considered to have done more than any single individual in laying the foundations of the English railroad system.
William Henry James assisted his father in his railway surveys in early life, and then began business independently as an engineer, in Birmingham. He made experiments in steam locomotion on common roads, and took out patents for locomotive steam engines, boilers, driving apparatus, and so on. His patent for a water-tube boiler for road locomotives was secured in 1823, and his first car was built in 1824. This was a twenty-passenger steam coach. Each rear wheel had a double-cylinder engine, and the pistons were worked at a pressure of two hundred pounds per square inch. Separate engines to each driver gave each wheel an independent motion, so that power and speed might be varied for turning corners, the outer wheel travelling over a much greater space than the inner wheel. When the front wheels were so placed that the carriage proceeded in a straight line an equal amount of steam was admitted to each pair of cylinders, but when the front wheel was in the lock the engine driving the outer wheel received a greater amount of steam and thus developed more power and traveled faster than the inner wheel. This arrangement was said to be so efficient that the carriage could be made to describe every variety of curve, repeatedly making turns of less than ten feet radius. The whole of the machinery was mounted upon laminated carriage springs. This arrangement caused the engines and their framework to vibrate altogether upon the crank-shaft as a center, at the same time connecting these engines to the boiler by means of hollow axles moving in stuffing boxes. Each engine had two cylinders of small diameter and long stroke; to these separate engines steam was supplied from the boiler by means of the main pipe, which moved through steam-tight stuffing boxes to the slide valve-boxes by small pipes. The locomotive was entirely distinct from the passenger carriage.
Sir James C. Anderson became associated with James, and in 1829 they built another carriage. This weighed nearly three tons, and the first trials were made round a circle of one hundred and sixty feet in diameter. When it was finally ready to be brought out it was loaded with fifteen passengers and driven several miles on a rough gravel road across Epping Forest, with a speed varying from twelve to fifteen miles an hour. Steam was supplied by two tubular boilers, each forming a hollow cylinder four feet six inches long. The tubes of which the boilers were composed were common gas pipe, one of which split on one of the trips, thus letting the water out of one of the boilers and extinguishing its fire. Under these circumstances, with only one boiler in operation, the carriage returned home at the rate of about seven miles an hour, carrying more than twenty passengers—at one period, indeed, it is said, a much greater number; showing that sufficient steam could be generated in such a boiler to be equal to the propulsion of between five and six tons weight. In consequence of this demonstration that the most brilliant success was attainable, the proprietors dismantled the carriage and commenced the construction of superior tubular boilers with much stronger tubes.
Shortly after Anderson and James commenced to build another steam carriage, which was ready for use in November, 1829. This engine was not intended to carry passengers, but to be employed for drawing carriages behind. Four tubular boilers were used, the total number of tubes being nearly two hundred. These boilers were enclosed in a space four feet wide, three feet long, and two feet deep. The steam from each boiler was conducted into one main steam pipe one and one-half inches in diameter, and the communication from any one of the boilers could be cut off in case of leakage. Four cylinders, each two and one-quarter inch bore and nine inch stroke, were arranged vertically in the hind part of the locomotive, and two of them acted upon each crank-shaft as before, giving a separate motion to each driving wheel.
The exhaust steam was conducted through two copper tanks for heating the feed water to a high temperature, and thence passed to the chimney. The steering-gear consisted of an external pillar containing a vertical shaft, at the upper end of which small bevel-gearing was used, giving motion to the vertical shaft, whose bottom end carried a pinion gearing into a sector attached to the fore axle. The motion of the crank-shafts was communicated to the separate axles of the driving-wheels by spur-gearing with two speeds.
In experiments made with this carriage, the greatest speed obtained upon a level, on a very indifferent road, was at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and it never ran more than three or four miles without breaking some of the steam joints. The Mechanic’s Magazine, reporting one of these trials, said: “A series of interesting experiments were made throughout the whole of yesterday with a new steam carriage belonging to Sir James Anderson, Bart., and W. H. James, Esq., on the Vauxhall, Kensington, and Clapham roads, with the view of ascertaining the practical advantages of some perfectly novel apparatus attached to the engines, the results of which were so satisfactory that the proprietors intend immediately establishing several stage coaches on the principle. The writer was favored with a ride during the last experiment, when the machine proceeded from Vauxhall Bridge to the Swan at Clapham, a distance of two and a half miles, which was run at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. From what I had the pleasure of witnessing, I am confident that this carriage is far superior to every other locomotive carriage hitherto brought before the public, and that she will easily perform fifteen miles an hour throughout a long journey. The body of the carriage, if not elegant, is neat, being the figure of a parallelogram. It is a very small and compact machine, and runs upon four wheels.”
W. H. James patented another steam carriage in August, 1832. This varied much from his earlier engines in the working parts, and it was not generally considered to be as satisfactory as the others. Sir James Anderson was not able, for pecuniary reasons, to continue to back James in his experimenting, and it does not appear that these plans of 1832 were ever consummated in a completed vehicle.
James was a man of strong mind, an original thinker and thoroughly well-trained by his apprenticeship with his father. He spent a good part of his life in experimenting with common-road steam propulsion, but he had not monetary resources or financial ability commensurate with his mechanical genius. When the support of Anderson was withdrawn from him he seems to have been compelled to give up. Little has been recorded concerning the latter years of his life, and his death in the almshouse sufficiently indicates the poverty in which his last years were spent. His father also sacrificed his life to the cause of railroad advancement, losing his entire fortune and dying a poor man.