page_title: Fowler's Ghost
hierarchical_section_title: Fowler's Ghost
caption_attribution_description: Metropolitan Railway fireless locomotive "Fowler's Ghost". This is the only known photograph of this locomotive. It is standing near Edgware Road station on the Metropolitan Railway in about 1865.
context_page_description: "Fowler's Ghost" is the nickname given to an experimental fireless 2-4-0 steam locomotive designed by John Fowler and built in 1861 for use on the Metropolitan Railway, London's first underground railway. The broad gauge locomotive used exhaust recondensing techniques and a large quantity of fire bricks to retain heat and prevent the emission of smoke and steam in tunnels.
  After trials on the Great Western Railway in 1861 and in London in 1862, the locomotive was considered a failure; on its first trial it was near to exploding, and problems with steaming and pressure retention were never overcome. The locomotive was sold in 1865 with the intention to convert it into a conventional steam engine, but it was quietly scrapped in 1895.
  The locomotive was considered an embarrassment to its designer, the respected engineer John Fowler, and its existence was denied for many years; the sobriquet "Fowler's Ghost" was given to it by The Railway Magazine in a retrospective article in January 1901, and this has subsequently become the standard reference name for the engine.
context_section_description: "Fowler's Ghost" is the nickname given to an experimental fireless 2-4-0 steam locomotive designed by John Fowler and built in 1861 for use on the Metropolitan Railway, London's first underground railway. The broad gauge locomotive used exhaust recondensing techniques and a large quantity of fire bricks to retain heat and prevent the emission of smoke and steam in tunnels.
  After trials on the Great Western Railway in 1861 and in London in 1862, the locomotive was considered a failure; on its first trial it was near to exploding, and problems with steaming and pressure retention were never overcome. The locomotive was sold in 1865 with the intention to convert it into a conventional steam engine, but it was quietly scrapped in 1895.
  The locomotive was considered an embarrassment to its designer, the respected engineer John Fowler (who later designed the Forth Rail Bridge), and its existence was denied for many years; the sobriquet "Fowler's Ghost" was given to it by The Railway Magazine in a retrospective article in January 1901, and this has subsequently become the standard reference name for the engine.
caption: Fowler's fireless locomotive at Edgware Road, October 1862. This is the only known image of the locomotive.[1]
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