Henry Hoy

Henry Albert Hoy (1855–1910) was a British locomotive engineer who served as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway from 1899 to 1904, bridging the celebrated tenures of John Aspinall and George Hughes, and who subsequently became Manager of Beyer, Peacock and Co. of Manchester — one of the most distinguished British locomotive builders of the Victorian and Edwardian era.

Born at Manchester on 18 December 1855, Hoy was apprenticed at the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway's Horwich Works and rose through the works hierarchy to become Works Manager — the practical engineering chief of the L&YR's locomotive manufacturing operation — before succeeding Aspinall as CME when the latter was promoted to General Manager of the railway in 1899.

Hoy's tenure as CME was competent rather than innovative. His L&YR designs included a class of 0-8-0 heavy mineral engines for the L&YR's intensive coal traffic from the Yorkshire coalfield, and improvements to Aspinall's existing designs rather than a wholesale new programme. He left the L&YR in 1904 to take up the management post at Beyer, Peacock, bringing his railway engineering experience to one of the world's most respected locomotive builders at a time when the firm was developing its articulated Garratt locomotive concept and competing for contracts across the British Empire and beyond. He died suddenly on 22 May 1910, his brief tenure at Beyer Peacock ending before the firm's Garratt programme had reached its full fruition.