Robert Webb Pearce

Robert Webb Pearce (1831-1889) .

Railway Achievements

• 1855-1889, East Indian Railway (EIR) , Carriage and Wagon Superintendent for the EIR Carriage and Wagon Workshop at Howrah .
• 1889, on his death, he was succeeded as Carriage and Wagon Superintendent by his brother Richard Pearce

Biography

Institute of Mechanical Engineers, London - Obituary dated 1889 .

• Born Macclesfield, England on 11 November 1831, educated at the local grammar school. Apprenticed to Brown Marshalls & Co., in New Canal Street, Birmingham, and afterwards at their new Britannia Carriage Works, Saltley. Passing through the shops he became confidential assistant and chief of the drawing office.
• In 1855 he was offered and accepted the post of Carriage and Wagon Superintendent of the East Indian Railway, and left England in December 1855; but finding his position not what he expected, he would have left the railway and started a wagon-building works in India. He was persuaded however to remain, and afterwards had independent charge of the carriage and wagon department from Howrah to Delhi and Jubbulpore, about 1,500 miles of line.
• The large works at Howrah were designed and built under his superintendence, employing at the busiest time from three to four thousand local workmen, all trained under him. The whole of the East Indian Railway stock has been built or erected at the Howrah works, together with a great portion of the stock in use by the metre-gauge railways.
• His designs were copied throughout India, and he was the first to introduce iron instead of wood for the panels and framing of carriages and wagons. He was also the first to recognise the value of oil as a lubricant for railway vehicles, instead of grease; and his design of an axle-box for oil and cotton waste became almost universally adopted in India. He nearly doubled the carrying power of the old wagon stock, by increasing the size of axle and journal ; and, had he lived, would shortly have completed his design of 18 feet by 9 feet iron covered goods wagon, weighing 7 tons and carrying 15 tons, a gross load of 22 tons on two axles with 43 inch journals ; paying load more than 2 to 1.
• The improvements he introduced into railway carriages and wagons were so numerous and so important that he has been called the ‘father of carriage and wagon’ building in India, and is looked upon in this light.
• His long residence in the tropical climate of Bengal, and his disinclination to take leave of absence during thirteen years with scarcely a day’s holiday, and his constant application to work, eventually told on a fine constitution... he was attacked with malarious fever, from which he never quite recovered ; and in April 1888 he took furlough to England, but too late to shake off the effects of climate ; and he died at West Kensington, London, on 26 July 1889.