Francis Trevithick

Francis Trevithick (1812–1877) was a British locomotive engineer, eldest son of the celebrated Richard Trevithick, who served as Locomotive Superintendent of the London and North Western Railway's Northern Division at Crewe from 1846 until 1857 and who, together with Alexander Allan, was responsible for developing Crewe Works into one of the most significant locomotive manufacturing establishments in Victorian Britain.

Born at Penponds, Cornwall on 25 January 1812, Francis Trevithick was educated at Truro Grammar School and served his engineering apprenticeship at the Hayle Foundry in Cornwall — the same Cornish engineering tradition from which his father had emerged. He became Locomotive Superintendent of the Grand Junction Railway in 1841, and when the LNWR was formed by amalgamation in 1846 he was appointed to the Northern Division at Crewe, which had just been established as the railway's principal locomotive works.

Trevithick and Allan developed the 'Crewe Type' 2-2-2 and 2-4-0 locomotive designs that became the standard LNWR motive power of the late 1840s and 1850s, notable for their outside frames and inside cylinders — a configuration that gave the design its characteristic appearance and influenced subsequent British locomotive practice. Crewe Works under Trevithick grew from a modest repair facility into a major manufacturing operation capable of building locomotives from raw materials, establishing the works' tradition of comprehensive engineering self-sufficiency that would reach its peak under Francis Webb in the following generation.

Trevithick resigned from the LNWR in 1857 and set up in private engineering practice. In retirement he devoted considerable effort to writing a biography of his father — published in 1872 — that became a fundamental source for the early history of the steam locomotive and Richard Trevithick's pioneering contributions. He died at Penzance on 20 October 1877.