Jonathan Forster

Jonathan Forster was the resident enginewright at the Wylam Colliery in Northumberland during the early 1810s and worked with the colliery's viewer William Hedley and blacksmith Timothy Hackworth to build the Wylam locomotives, including the surviving Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly.

Forster's primary contribution was the practical fabrication of the engines, the principles having been worked out by Hedley after extensive trials with a 'travelling engine' to settle the question of smooth-wheel adhesion. Forster's name is recorded in the colliery accounts and in contemporary witnesses' accounts of the Wylam locomotives' construction, but few personal biographical details survive.