Everard Calthrop

Everard Richard Calthrop (3 March 1857 – 30 March 1927) was a British railway engineer and inventor. Calthrop was a notable promoter and builder of narrow-gauge railways, especially of narrow gauge, and was especially prominent in India. His most notable achievement was the Barsi Light Railway, but he is best known in his home country for the Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway. Calthrop has been described as a "railway genius". Later in life he took an interest in aviation, patenting some early designs for parachutes.

Early life and career Calthrop was born on 3 March 1857, the eldest son of farmer Everard Calthrop. He had six brothers, one of whom was Sir Guy Calthrop, general manager of the London and North Western Railway. The family lived at Deeping Fen, Lincolnshire, where Calthrop was born, and later at Sutton in the Isle of Ely. Calthrop was educated at Uppingham School.

Calthrop started work with Robert Stephenson and Company and then was apprenticed to the London & North Western Railway at Crewe in 1874. In 1879 he joined the Great Western Railway, where he rose to assistant manager of the Carriage and Wagon Works. In 1882 he went to India to join the Great Indian Peninsula Railway as a locomotive inspector.

Once in India, Calthrop came to see narrow-gauge railways as a way to help develop the country. This led him to chairing a Government committee to investigate light railways throughout India. He then published a pamphlet entitled A System of Standard Details as applied to the Construction of Rolling Stock in India. As a result of this pamphlet, the Indian Government adopted systems of uniformity of gauge and equipment throughout the country, and eventually adopted gauge as the standard narrow gauge throughout the country.

Calthrop had been engaged in negotiations with the Indian government for concessions to build a railway from Barsi Road to Barsi since 1887. In 1895, negotiations reached a satisfactory conclusion, and Calthrop formed a new company to build the Barsi Light Railway, and employed himself as consulting engineer. The line was constructed with rail inclination, then a new idea, which involves tilting the rail a few degrees to make its surface more nearly parallel with that of the tyre. Inclination is now applied universally to railways. The rolling stock could accept radius curves.

Prior to shipment of the rolling stock to India, Calthrop and the manufacturer (Leeds Forge Company) conducted tests on a specially-built test track located at Newlay, near Leeds. The line was opened for inspection by railway officials and journalists, and a number of reports were published in the technical railway press.

The Barsi Light Railway opened in 1897, and was extended on a number of occasions until it reached a total length of in 1927. and the railway was immensely successful, establishing Calthrop as one of the leading figures in the field.

Involvement in other railways With the success of the Barsi Light Railway, Calthrop was in demand as a consultant for other narrow-gauge railway projects.

Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway

Calthrop appeared at the Light Railway Inquiry for the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway on 3–4 August 1897, and spoke particularly on the proposed open level crossings and the use of transporter wagons. Calthrop claimed it only took three minutes to transfer wagons, based on his experience on the Barsi Light Railway. However, the order was not made until 8 September 1899, and in early 1900, the proprietors reached agreement with the Cambrian Railways to build the line. Their engineer, Alfred J. Collins, took charge of the engineering requirements, with consequent conservative 4-wheel wagons and other provisions.

Victorian Railways narrow-gauge lines

In 1898 Calthrop corresponded with the government of the colony of Victoria, Australia, regarding proposals for the construction of narrow-gauge lines in that colony. Subsequently, on his advice, the gauge of the railways as built was changed from to .

Fayoum Light Railway

Calthrop was appointed to advise on engineering matters for this gauge Egyptian light railway, construction of which began in 1898. The railway comprised seven, mostly roadside, branch lines with a total length of . The Fayoum Light Railway served an irrigation district south of Cairo, centred on the provincial capital of Medinet-el-Fayum. Calthrop used pictures of rolling stock from the railway to illustrate a chapter he wrote for the book Pioneer Irrigation and Light Railways.

Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway

The Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway was a long standard-gauge branch line linking the Great Western Railway at Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire with mineral deposits in the Clee Hills. Calthrop was appointed Consulting Engineer in 1900, responsible for surveying the route and preparing the construction plans.

Arakan Light Railway

In 1910 Calthrop was engaged as consulting engineer by the promoters of a new railway between Buthidaung and Maungdaw in Burma, later known as the Arakan Light Railway. Calthrop had the proposed gauge changed from narrow gauge to narrow gauge. For this railway Calthrop had built two Garratt locomotives, to which he had attached plates reading "E.R.Calthrop's System of Narrow Gauge Mountain Railways". Calthrop was an early adopter of the Garratt type, this being the ninth order for Garratts taken by Beyer-Peacock, and the smallest Garratt design ever built by them.

Patents for parachutes

Calthrop was a close personal friend of Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce fame. Rolls was a pioneer aviator, being the first man to fly across the English Channel in both directions. On 12 July 1910 Calthrop accompanied him to the Bournemouth International Aviation Meeting, and was present when Rolls died after he lost control of his biplane and crashed. That and a similar, non-fatal, accident involving his son Tev, led Calthrop to believe that a parachute could be used to save pilots in similar circumstances. An unofficial report offered the opinion that parachutes "might impair the fighting spirit of pilots" and the offer was rejected. Calthrop was encouraged to remain quiet about his invention, but faced with increasing losses of pilots he publicised the parachute in 1917. Despite a campaign by some pilots, the Royal Flying Corps declined to introduce parachutes during World War I, although air forces of most other nations did so.

Calthrop's "Guardian Angel" parachute received much praise and was used during the war to drop agents behind enemy lines. In October 1918 an article on use of parachutes stated that the "Guardian Angel" was one of the best known and that "balloonists can take their perilous leap, when attacked by a Hun scout, with real confidence in a safe landing". By 1918 it was known that the Germans were fully aware of Calthrop's work, and supplied their pilots with a similar design. However, when the Royal Air Force finally adopted parachutes after the war, they chose an American design.

Private life

During his time in India, Calthrop made occasional trips back to Britain. On one such trip he married Isabel Mary Earle, the daughter of the Reverend Walter Earle, a friend of his parents. The wedding took place on 19 November 1890 at the Bilton Parish Church, Rugby. They had four children, Everard Earle (Tev, b. 1892), Keith de Suffield (b. 1894), Isabelle Iris (b. 1895), and Betty Marion (b. 1899). Tev joined the army and became a Colonel in the Royal Engineers, while Keith, after a stint in the Royal Engineers went on to become Assistant General Manager and Mechanical Engineer of the Barsi Light Railway, a post he held until 1932. with stables and of grounds. It was here that he bred his horses and developed his theories of horse training. Calthrop rejected the cruel methods of breaking horses common in that era, and practiced gentle methods. Such was his concern for his horses that he had them humanely destroyed rather than have them commandeered by the British army at the start of the First World War. After the war he was able to return to his horses, and wrote an authoritative book, The Horse, as Comrade and Friend, published in 1920. Calthrop was a prominent member of the Arab Horse Society, and received commendations for his stallion, Fitz, at its first show in 1919.

Other narrow-gauge pioneers Paul Decauville Robert Fairlie Abraham Fitzgibbon Thomas Hall Carl Abraham Pihl