Frederick Hawksworth

Born	10 February 1884
Died	13 July 1976
Nationality	English
Employer	Great Western Railway, Swindon (apprentice 1899; Drawing Office; Chief Draughtsman; Principal Assistant CME under Charles Collett; Chief Mechanical Engineer 1941–1947)

Biography

Frederick William Hawksworth (1884–1976) was a British locomotive engineer who served as the last Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway, from July 1941 until nationalisation in January 1948. He was the last man to hold a top GWR engineering office in continuous succession from Daniel Gooch.

Born at Swindon on 10 February 1884, the son of a GWR pattern maker, Hawksworth was apprenticed at Swindon in 1899 and spent his entire career there. He served as Chief Draughtsman from 1925, preparing the working drawings of the Castle and King classes, and was Principal Assistant to Charles Collett from 1932.

His tenure was constrained by wartime materials shortages and the GWR's gradually-deteriorating finances. The County Class 4-6-0 of 1945, a two-cylinder mixed-traffic engine with a higher-pressure boiler than any previous GWR class, and the modifications to the Hall and Manor classes (becoming the Modified Hall and Modified Manor) were his principal designs. He also designed the 1500 Class 0-6-0PT pannier tank (the GWR's only outside-cylinder pannier) and the 15XX heavy yard pilot.

Hawksworth retired at the end of 1947 and lived in Swindon until his death on 13 July 1976, aged 92.

Locomotives designed

GWR 1000 County Class — Frederick Hawksworth's post-war two-cylinder 4-6-0 mixed-traffic class for the Great Western Railway, introduced 1945 with the highest boiler pressure of any GWR class at 280 psi. Thirty engines were built at Swindon between 1945 and 1947 and named after English and Welsh counties. None of the original 30 was preserved; a new-build engine, No. 1014 County of Glamorgan, is currently under construction at Didcot Railway Centre.
GWR 1500 / 1600 Class — Hawksworth's 1949 GWR/BR 1500 class 0-6-0PT and 1949 1600 class 0-6-0PT — Hawksworth's pannier tank designs. The 1500 class (10 built) was a heavy outside-cylinder shunting tank; the 1600 class (70 built) was a light branch tank. 1501 (1500), 1638, 1369 (a related light tank) preserved.
GWR 1500 Class — Hawksworth's unconventional final pannier tank, a heavy 0-6-0PT shunter with outside cylinders, Walschaerts valve gear, no running plate, and a very short wheelbase, designed at Swindon during the GWR's last years but built entirely under British Railways in 1949. The ten members of the class spent most of their working lives shuffling empty coaches in and out of Paddington, with a Welsh contingent based around Newport. Their service lives were short; only 1501 survives in preservation.
GWR 6959 Modified Hall Class — Frederick Hawksworth's 1944 development of Charles Collett's GWR 4900 Hall Class, the Modified Hall (sometimes called the "Hawksworth Hall") was a two-cylinder mixed-traffic 4-6-0 with revised plate frames carried forward to the smokebox saddle, individual bogie springing in place of the equalising beam, a three-row superheater, and a higher-pitched main steam pipe casing. 71 were built at Swindon Works between 1944 and 1950, the prototype 6959 emerging in March 1944 and the last, 7929 <em>Wyke Hall</em>, in November 1950. Withdrawn between 1962 and 1965 alongside the Collett Halls. Seven examples are preserved.
GWR 9400 — Hawksworth's 1947 GWR 9400 class 0-6-0PT — Hawksworth's last GWR pannier tank design, with Belpaire firebox and superheating. 210 built (10 GWR pre-Nationalisation, 200 BR/Western Region post-1948). 9466 preserved at the Didcot Railway Centre; 9400 itself at STEAM Swindon.