The Hurricane

Hurricane was the second of a pair of steam locomotives (the other being Thunderer) built for the Great Western Railway (GWR) by R. & W. Hawthorn & Co. whose design was very different from other locomotives. In order to meet Isambard Kingdom Brunel's strict specifications, a 2-2-2 frame carried the 'engine', while the boiler was on a separate six-wheeled frame.
== Background ==
The Hurricane was the last of a series of truly bizarre locomotives built for the Great Western around 1838. This is the earliest engine on display in the Loco Wing of the Museum of Retrotech, and it would be quite wrong to poke fun at engineers still feeling their way in a young technology, but I think it was pretty well established by then that this was not going to be a good idea.
As Ernest Carter so aptly put it: "The engine formed a kind of procession when it passed."
First came the engine itself, with a huge 120 inch or 10-foot driving wheels impelled by two inside/internal cylinders. Then came the separate boiler, (connected by jointed pipes) and finally a conventional tender. The 10-foot driving wheels are believed to be the largest ever applied to a steam locomotive. The engine was built to the patents of one T.E. Harrison, who nevertheless went on to become the chief engineer of the North Eastern Railway.
The obvious screw-up here is that very little of the locomotive's weight is available for adhesion- one wonders that it could move at all.
There is anecdotal evidence that the Hurricane achieved 100 mph on a 28 mile test run in September 1839. However this seems highly unlikely as even if it had the horsepower and adhesion to reach this speed, it appears very doubtful that the Hurricane would have had the dynamic stability to stay on the rails. 100 mph is also a suspiciously round figure. The locomotive was delivered to the GWR on October 6, 1838 and ceased work in December 1839 after running for just 10,527 miles. After withdrawal, the boiler was used on a new Pyracmon Class goods locomotive, Bacchus.
Category:Experimental locomotives
Category:Scrapped locomotives
Category:Steam locomotives
Category:Great Western Railway locomotives
Category:Standard gauge locomotives
Category:Early steam locomotives
Category:4 foot 8 1⁄2 inch gauge
Category:United Kingdom
Category:Built in 1838
Category:Tender locomotives
Category:Rebuilds