Agenoria

In 1828 Foster, Rastrick & Co. of Stourbridge — a partnership between the engineer John Urpeth Rastrick and the Stourbridge ironmaster James Foster — were commissioned to build four locomotives, three for export to American railways and one for the local Shutt End Colliery Railway near Kingswinford. The American engines (Stourbridge Lion, Hudson, and Delaware) were the first locomotives to run on rails in North America. The fourth, named Agenoria, was the Shutt End engine.

The design was deliberately conservative: a vertical boiler with twin vertical cylinders driving the rear axle through grasshopper beams and gears, four coupled wheels, and an exceptionally tall chimney made of a sequence of stacked iron drums. The layout was already obsolete in mainline practice when built — by 1829 Stephenson was completing Rocket — but suited the slow heavy mineral haulage required at Shutt End.

Agenoria entered service at Shutt End Colliery in 1829, hauling coal from the colliery to the canal at Ashwood Basin. The engine worked at Shutt End for an extraordinary 35 years, finally being withdrawn in 1864.

The locomotive's historical significance was recognised early; it was preserved by the Earl of Dudley after withdrawal and eventually transferred to the Patent Office Museum (forerunner of the Science Museum) in 1884. Agenoria was later transferred to the National Railway Museum at York, where it remains on permanent static display.

Four-coupled (0-4-0) chassis with a vertical cylindrical boiler, twin vertical cylinders mounted on top, grasshopper-beam drive to the rear axle, and an extraordinarily tall chimney made of stacked iron sections. Visually unmistakable — quite unlike any horizontal-boiler locomotive of the period.

• Agenoria (1829, National Railway Museum)