Winans, Ross

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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b. 17 October 1796 Sussex County, New Jersey, USA

d. 11 April 1877 Baltimore, Maryland, USA

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American inventor and locomotive builder.

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Winans arrived in Baltimore in 1828 to sell horses to the Baltimore \& Ohio Railroad (B \& O), which was then under construction. To reduce friction in rail vehicles, he devised a system of axles which ran in oil-baths, with outside bearings. He demonstrated a hand-driven wagon with this system at the Rainhill Trials; the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway bought some wagons fitted with the system, but found them on test to be inferior to wagons with grease axle boxes. Back in Baltimore, Winans assisted Peter Cooper in building Tom Thumb. He took charge of the B \& O shops c.1834; he is said to have built the first eight-wheeled passenger coach and to have been the first to mount such a coach on two four-wheeled trucks or bogies. The arrangement soon became standard American practice, and, with partners, he built over 100 locomotives for the B \& O. In 1847 he pioneered the use of anthracite as locomotive fuel, and from 1848 he built his "Camel" locomotives with the driver's cab above the boiler.

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Further Reading

J.H.White Jr, 1979, A History of the American Locomotive-Its Development: 1830–1880, New York: Dover Publications Inc.

P.Ransome-Wallis (ed.), 1959, The Concise Encyclopaedia of World Railway Locomotives, London: Hutchinson, p. 503 (biography).

Dictionary of American Biography.

H.Booth, 1980, Henry Booth, Ilfracombe: Arthur H.Stockwell, pp. 75 and 91–2 (for the Liverpool \& Manchester wagons).

See also: Stephenson, George

PJGR