Robert Stephenson
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Statue of Robert Stephenson at Euston Station, London |
Robert Stephenson FRS (
October 16,
1803–
October 12,
1859) was an
English civil engineer. He was the only son of
George Stephenson, the famed
railway and
locomotive engineer; many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually joint efforts of father and son.
After a private education at the Bruce Academy in
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, an apprenticeship to Nicolas Wood, the manager of Killingworth Colliery, and a period at the
University of Edinburgh, Robert went to work with his father on his railway projects, the first being the
Stockton and Darlington. In
1823 Robert set up a company in partnership with his father and
Edward Pease to build railway locomotives; the firm,
Robert Stephenson and Company, built a large proportion of the world's early locomotives and survived into the mid-
20th century. The original factory building still exists, at Forth Street in Newcastle, as the Robert Stephenson Centre.
Robert did a good deal of the work for the
Rainhill Trials-winning
Rocket; following its success, the company built further locomotives for the
Liverpool and Manchester Railway and other newly-established railways, including the
Leicester and Swannington Railway.
In
1833 Robert was given the post of Chief Engineer for the
London and Birmingham Railway, the first main-line railway to enter
London, and the initial section of the
West Coast Main Line. The line posed a number of difficult civil engineering challenges, most notably
Kilsby Tunnel, and was completed in
1838. Stephenson was directly responsible for the tunnel under
Primrose Hill, which required excavation by shafts. Early locomotives could not manage the climb from
Euston Station to
Chalk Farm, requiring Stephenson to devise a system that would be draw them up the hill by chains using a steam engine near
The Roundhouse. This impressive structure remains in use today as an Arts Centre.
He constructed a number of well-known bridges, including the
High Level Bridge at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the wrought-iron box-section
Britannia Bridge across the
Menai Strait, the
Conwy railway bridge between
Llandudno Junction and
Conwy,
Arnside Viaduct in
Cumbria and the Royal Border Bridge at
Berwick-upon-Tweed.
He served as
Conservative Member of Parliament for
Whitby from
1847 until his death. He was a commissioner of the short-lived London
Metropolitan Commission of Sewers from
1848. He was President of the
Institution of Civil Engineers for two years from
1855. His remains are interred at
Westminster Abbey.
Despite officially being rivals, Stephenson shared a friendship with
Isambard Kingdom Brunel and they would often help each other on various projects.
The
Stephenson Railway Museum in
North Shields is named after George and Robert Stephenson.
One of Stephenson's few failures was his design of the
Dee bridge, which
collapsed under a train. He was heavily critised for the design, even before the collapse, particularly for the poor choice of materials.
Stephenson appears as a character in the
anime film Steamboy, in that
world having apparently lived until 1866. In the English dub of the film his character also speaks with a rather posh stereotypical English accent and not the northern tones Stephenson used.
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Portuguese written article about Robert Stephenson
