William Barton Wright

William Barton Wright (1827–1915) was a British locomotive engineer who served as Locomotive Superintendent of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway from 1875 to 1886, providing the railway with its first coherent family of standard locomotive types after decades of accumulated variety and laying the engineering foundations on which his celebrated successor John Aspinall built the modern L&YR fleet.

Born at Brislington, Bristol on 7 December 1827, Barton Wright was educated at Bristol Trade School and gained his railway engineering experience on the Madras Railway in India before returning to Britain to take the L&YR's senior locomotive post on the death of William Hurst in 1875. He inherited a miscellaneous fleet accumulated from various pre-merger railways and set about rationalising it into a manageable range of standard types suited to the L&YR's intensive industrial traffic across Lancashire and Yorkshire.

His most numerous design was the Class 25 0-6-0 mineral engine, of which 280 were eventually built — a straightforward and practical goods locomotive well suited to the L&YR's heavy coal and freight traffic. Many were subsequently rebuilt by Aspinall as 0-6-2 saddle tanks for shunting and yard duties. His 2-4-2T radial tanks for suburban passenger working also proved durable, outlasting the L&YR's independent existence and serving into LMS days. Barton Wright resigned in 1886 to take up engineering consultancy work and was succeeded by Aspinall, who completed Horwich Works and transformed the L&YR's locomotive practice. He died at Bath on 11 September 1915.