Walschaert, Egide

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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b. 20 January 1820 Mechlin, Belgium

d. 18 February 1901 Saint-Lilies, Brussels, Belgium

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Belgian inventor of Walschaerrt valve gear for steam engines.

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Walschaert was appointed Foreman of the Brussels Midi workshops of the Belgian State Railways in 1844, when they were opened, and remained in this position until 1885. He invented his valve gear the year he took up his appointment and was allowed to fit it to a 2–2–2 locomotive in 1848, the results being excellent. It was soon adopted in Belgium and to a lesser extent in France, but although it offered accessibility, light weight and mechanical efficiency, railways elsewhere were remarkably slow to take it up. It was first used in the British Isles in 1878, on a 0–4–4 tank locomotive built to the patent of Robert Fairlie, but was not used again there until 1890. By contrast, Fairlie had already used Walchaert's valve gear in 1873, on locomotives for New Zealand, and when New Zealand Railways started to build their own locomotives in 1889 they perpetuated it. The valve gear was only introduced to the USA following a visit by an executive of the Baldwin Locomotive Works to New Zealand ten years later. Subsequently it came to be used almost everywhere there were steam locomotives. Walschaert himself invented other improvements for steam engines, but none with lasting effect.

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Further Reading

P.Ransome-Wallis (ed.), 1959, The Concise Encyclopaedia, of World Railway Locomotives, London: Hutchinson (includes both a brief biography of Walschaert (p.

502) and a technical description of his valve gear (p. 298)).

E.L.Ahrons, 1927, The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825–1925, London: The Locomotive Publishing Co., pp. 224 and 289 (describes the introduction of the valve gear to Britain).

J.B.Snell, 1964, Early Railways, London: Weidenfeld \& Nicolson, 103.

PJGR