Bousquet, Gaston du

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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b. 20 August 1839 Paris, France

d. 24 March 1910 Paris, France

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French locomotive engineer noted for the successful development of compound locomotives.

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Bousquet spent his entire working life with the Northern Railway of France, reaching the position of Chief Engineer of Rolling Stock and Motive Power in 1890. In 1886 he was associated with Alfred de Glehn, technical head of locomotive builder Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques, in the building of a four-cylinder, four-crank, compound 2–2–2–0 partly derived from the work of F.W. Webb. In continuing association with de Glehn, Bousquet then designed a four-cylinder, compound 440 with the low-pressure cylinders beneath the smokebox and the high-pressure ones outside the frames; the first was completed in 1891. The details were well designed and the locomotive was the forerunner of a highly successful series. It was developed into 4–6–0, 4–4–2 and 4–6–2 types, and examples were used in quantity by all the principal French railways and by some in Germany, while G.J. Churchward brought three of the 4–4–2s to the Great Western Railway in England for comparison with his own locomotives. In 1905 Bousquet introduced an articulated 0–6–2+2–6–0 compound tank locomotive for freight trains: the two driving bogies supported a frame carrying boiler, tanks, etc. At the time of his death he was working on compound 4–6–4 locomotives.

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Further Reading

J.T.van Riemsdijk, 1970, "The compound locomotive (Part 1)", Transactions of the New comen Society 43; 1972, Part 2, Transactions of the New comen Society 44 (fully describes Bousquet's locomotives).

See also: Mallet, Jules Théodore Anatole

PJGR