Ruston (engine builder)

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Ruston, Proctor and Company
Former type private
Fate Merger
Predecessor Proctor and Burton
Successor Ruston & Hornsby
Founded 1857 (1840)
Defunct 1918
Headquarters Lincoln, England
Industry Engineering
Products Engines, Locomotives, Steam Engines, Turbines
Subsidiaries Ruston-Bucyrus

Ruston was an industrial equipment manufacturer in Lincoln, England, the company's history going back to 1840. The company is best known as a manufacturer of narrow and standard gauge diesel locomotives and also of steam shovels. Other products included cars, steam locomotives and a range of internal combustion engines, and later gas turbines. The company is now part of the Siemens group of Germany.

Contents

[edit] Early history

A 3hp Ruston engine type PB of 1935

The original company was Proctor and Burton established in 1840, operating as millwrights and engineers. They became Ruston, Proctor and Company in 1857 when Joseph Ruston joined them, acquiring limited liability status in 1899. From 1866 they built a number of four and six-coupled tank locomotives, one of which was sent to the Paris Exhibition in 1867. In 1868 they built five 0-6-0 tank engines for the Great Eastern Railway to the design of Samuel W. Johnson. Three of these were converted to crane tanks, two of which lasted until 1952, aged eighty-four. Among the company's output were sixteen for Argentina and some for T. A. Walker, the contractor building the Manchester Ship Canal.

During the First World War, Ruston assisted in the war effort, producing some of the very first tanks and a number of aircraft, notably the Sopwith Camel.

[edit] Ruston & Hornsby

Ruston & Hornsby traction engine of 1922 (ser.no.115100)
Ruston & Hornsby 2 hp portable engine no. 163844 Tiny Imp at GDSF 2008
Ruston & Hornsby threshing machine (left) 2nd half of the 19th century (SN 27894) at Riga open air museum (Latvia)
Talyllyn Railway No. 5, built by Ruston & Hornsby in 1940

On 11 September 1918, the company amalgamated with Richard Hornsby & Sons of Grantham to become Ruston and Hornsby Ltd. Hornsby was the world leader in heavy oil engines, having been building them since 1891, a full eight years before Rudolph Diesel's engine was produced commercially.

Ruston built oil and diesel engines in sizes from a few HP up to large industrial engines. Several R&H engines are on display at the Anson Engine Museum at Poynton nr Manchester. Also at Internal Fire Museum of Power, Tanygroes near Cardigan. [1] The company also diversified into the manufacture of petrol engines, again from around 1.5 hp upwards, some of these designs were later manufactured under licence by the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company.

[edit] Steam machinery

The firm were builders of steam engines and portable steam engines for many years, mainly for the agricultural market.

In World War 1, the company made planes.

[edit] The Ruston-Hornsby car

After World War I the company attempted to diversify and one outcome was the Ruston-Hornsby car. Two versions were made, a 15.9 hp with a Dorman 2614 cc engine and a larger 20 hp model with 3308 cc engine of their own manufacture. The cars were however very heavy, being built on a 9-inch chassis[clarification needed], and extremely expensive – the cheapest was around £440 and the most expensive nearly £1000, and within a few years other makers were selling similar vehicles that weighed only 3/4 ton and cost around £120 - £200 – and never reached the hoped-for production volumes. About 1500 were made between 1919 and 1924 two of which are still retained by Siemens on the Lincoln site, one is fully restored in running/driving condition while the second example is still awaiting attention.

The R-H car was developed by the Chief Engineer, Edward Boughton, who joined the company in 1916 after helping to develop the tank. Later he would start the Automotive Products Group (APG) in Leamington Spa in 1920 which made Borg & Beck clutches, Lockheed hydraulic brakes, and Purolator fuel filters.

[edit] Diesels and Gas Turbines

Ruston & Hornsby was a major producer of small and medium diesel engines for land and marine applications. The company began to build diesel locomotives in 1931 (and continued up until 1967). It was a pioneer and major developer in the industrial application of small (up to 10,000 kW) heavy duty gas turbines from the 1950s onwards. In the 1960s it was Europe's leading supplier of land-based gas turbines. It introduced Dry Low Emission (DLE) combustion technology in the mid 1990s and becoming market leaders.

The initiation of the production and design of gas turbines was largely due to Bob Fielden OBE (1917-2004) who joined the company in 1946. Gas turbines were first produced in 1952.

Industrial Gas Turbines of note manufactured as the Lincoln plant:

  • TA
  • TB
  • TD
  • Tornado
  • Typhoon
  • Tempest
  • Cyclone

In the 1950s, it was producing one turbine a fortnight. The company sold its 1000th gas turbine in July 1977. It won the MacRobert Award in December 1983. The company's Cambridge-educated Egyptian chairman, Dr Waheeb Rizk OBE, was concurrently President of the IMechE from 1984-5 and also President of the International Council on Combustion Engines from 1973-77. He was Managing Director from 1971-83 and developed the W layout for gas turbine power stations that were used as emergency generating stations for the National Grid, also known as peaking power plants. These had to be developed due to prolonged electricity blackouts in south-east England in 1961 caused by cascading failure.

Research work was done in conjunction with the University of Sussex in the 1980s.

[edit] Boilers

Main article: Vertical boilers with horizontal fire-tubes

Until the late 1960s, it produced Thermax boilers. The boiler business was sold for £1.75m to Cochrane & Co of Annan, Dumfries and Galloway in October 1968, who were bought by John Thompson of Wolverhampton four months later. They were bought by Clarke Chapman in 1970.

[edit] Energy schemes

In 1957, it was the first company to fit a main Royal Navy ship (HMS Cumberland) with a (experimental) gas turbine.

In 1959, it opened a new type of power plant using waste sewage gas that powered eight turbines at Britain's biggest sewage works at the Northern Outfall Sewer at Beckton in east London. This was a combined heat and power plant.

The company pioneered combined heat and power schemes. In the 1970s, these were not as well developed as today because electricity companies were not interested in developing a market that would provide direct competition to themselves. CHP schemes were then known as total energy schemes.

The large Singer factory in Clydebank, which employed 11,000 people, was notably powered by Rustons turbines. The King Faisal Specialist Hospital was installed with a CHP unit in 1975. Whitehall in London is heated and has its electricity from a CHP unit built in the late 1990s.

[edit] Ownership

The company closed its Grantham (diesel engine) factory in 1963. The company itself was only taken over once, by English Electric, in November 1966 who paid £25m. Robert Inskip, 2nd Viscount Caldecote became Chairman of the company. In the R-H Group was also Bergius, Kelvin of Glasgow (now called Kelvin Diesels); Davey, Paxman & Co of Colchester (now owned by MAN SE); and Alfred Wiseman & Co Ltd (known as Alfred Wiseman Gears) in Grantham.

Up to that point, it had been listed on the Stock Exchange. This formed Britain's second largest diesel engine group, second to Hawker-Lister. From that moment on it was a subsidiary of a larger company. Then it progressively became part of the General Electric Company of UK ('GEC', not to be confused with the US firm General Electric (GE)) in 1968, because GEC bought English Electric. GEC then merged its heavy engineering division with Alsthom of France, so it became part of GEC-Alsthom in 1989, which changed its name to Alstom in 1998, when the Lincoln subsidiary was known as EGT. Latterly, Alstom sold its gas turbine division (in Lincoln and Franche-Comté) to Siemens (of Germany) in 2003 when Alstom faced financial ruin.

[edit] Economy of Lincoln

When owned by GEC in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many (if not the vast majority) of Lincoln engineering firms did not survive difficult financial conditions. This included Clayton Dewandre, who made brakes, and Dormans, who made diesel engines. Only the Ruston group of companies survived. The company actually expanded during this difficult time, helped by the fact that 80% of its engines were exported and the North Sea Oil industry was rapidly expanding at this time, which required portable electricity generation and heating.

[edit] Manufacturing plants

The original Ruston works (Waterside South, Lincoln) focused on Gas Turbine manufacture from 1967 becoming the head office of Ruston Gas Turbines Ltd (RGT Ltd). With the change of ownership in 1989 the name was changed to Europen Gas Turbines Ltd (EGT Ltd), following a spell as Alstom Gas Turbines Ltd the company is now known as Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd.

Technically, Ruston & Hornsby Ltd existed at the Vulcan Foundry in Newton-le-Willows in Merseyside until 2002, which was known as Ruston Diesels. It was taken over by MAN B&W Diesel AG on 12 June 2000.

The design and research centre in Lincoln opened in May 1957.

Its gas turbines are still manufactured in the Ruston Works in Lincoln and widely used around the world. Siemens announced in September 2009 that Gas Turbine packaging operations were to move abroad with the Lincoln site becoming 'feeder' plant.

[edit] Market focus

Rustons – in its various incarnations – was always an engine producer rather than a machine producer, and it could be considered that they simply produced machines in order to sell engines.[citation needed]

[edit] Preserved locomotives

"Murray" a 2 ft  (610 mm) gauge locomotive, on the Blenheim Riverside Railway
"County School" a standard gauge locomotive, on the Mid-Norfolk Railway

Heritage railways with Ruston locomotives include :

[edit] Video imagery of Rustons machinery

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ (internalfire.com)
  • Lowe, J.W. (1989). British Steam Locomotive Builders. Guild Publishing. 

[edit] External links

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