Gateshead honours an engineering giant

[John Ashworth]

Gateshead honours an engineering giant whose genius has lessons for our times

The UK's railways lost 70 years through sidelining the inventions of Sir Vincent Raven. They liked his steam engines too much

Martin Wainwright
Wednesday 21 March 2012 18.57 GMT
guardian.co.uk

Sir Vincent Raven sounds like a man to reckon with, and he was. Here's a big hand for Gateshead council, those visionaries in public art (the Angel, the Baltic, the Sage, the Winking Bridge), for turning their attention to engineers.

The Mayor of Gateshead, Coun Joe Mitchinson, has just unveiled a blue plaque to Raven on the site of the former Greenesfield railway works close to the High Level Bridge across the Tyne to Newcastle.

It was here that the great man spent much of his time as the last chief mechanical engineer of the North Eastern Railway, a title worthy of being set to music, perhaps to be played by the Tyne's new watermill organ, just described in the Guardian Northerner by Alan Sykes.

The plaque was arranged after requests from local people, which adds to the encouraging nature of the exercise, because Raven's career has lessons for the north east's economy and prospects today.

He made a name for himself, after arriving at Gateshead as an apprentice in 1876, for building very powerful and long-lasting steam engines which worked coal and iron-ore trains across the north of England. From this, he progressed to high-speed steam locomotives to thunder along at the head of passenger expresses. They were named proudly after the north's great cities.

But he is especially interesting as a frustrated visionary who argued far ahead of his time for electric trains. In the 1920s, he produced a complete and workable plan for new 90mph locos using electric power, which at the time was pretty much confined to model railways.

Mitchinson puts his finger on it when he says:

"Even now we think of electric trains as something modern, high tech almost. Raven was well ahead of his time; if circumstances hadn't changed the north east would have been a world leader in high speed electric trains. There is a very good chance that world railway history would have been totally different.

"His passion for electric trains was of duly proved to be well founded and today most of the passenger trains that link the North East to London and Edinburgh are the direct descendants of Raven's pioneering work."

Raven got as far as building a prototype of one of his planned engines in 1922 but that same year the company merged into the London and North Eastern Railway – the famous LNER – which was devoted to steam, Raven retired but continued to work on his plans and advocate them among the many contacts he had acquired through his work.

Gateshead'scabinet member for culture, Coun Linda Green, says:

"The role of Sir Vincent Raven in the history of railways, and Gateshead, should not be underestimated. He was one of the most visionary engineers of his time. The pioneering work he did might not have produced the results he would have liked within his lifetime, but it paved the way for the modern railway network we have today."

And the relevance to today? Here is another example of how a manufacturing culture encourages inspiration and innovation. Many ideas fail but some get through, and they can lay the foundations of enterprises bigger and more successful than those in the past.

Might nanotechnology in Durham and on Teesside be one? Or the cluster of 'green' industries and related research around the Tyne? Reminding the coming generations of past do-ers and thinkers such as Raven can only do good; and counter the lethargy-inducing effect of those who ignorantly say that northern manufacturing is finished.