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ROBERT COEY (1851-1934)

Robert Coey was Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Southern and Western Railway of Ireland (GS&WR) in what must have been its golden age. Traffic was increasing and passenger expectations of higher standards in railway travel were being met with the introduction of bogie carriages, on board lavatories, dining cars, corridors and heavier trains. Coey faced the challenge of providing more powerful locomotives to cope with those heavier loads but what is more, the company was prosperous enough to support considerable new investment in its rolling stock. It was only in his retirement that he would have witnessed the disruption and mayhem caused by the war of independence, civil war, economic war and the competition to the railways that came from motorised vehicles which brought a different culture to Irish railways; one of retrenchment and make do and mend.

Atkins1 describes Robert Coey as an Ulsterman born in Belfast in 1851. His family name was Cowie but he and his sister Catherine disliked the name and changed it by deed poll to the Irish spelling of Coey. Robert also had two older brothers, James and Henry, who served with the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway/Northern Counties Committee. James was General Manager of this railway between 1899 and 1922.

Atkins and Chacksfield2 describe how Coey served his apprenticeship with V. & D. Coates at the Lagan Foundry in Belfast, achieved distinction as the Whitworth Scholar at the London College of Science and a B. Eng. degree at Queen’s College, Belfast in 1876. He joined the drawing office of the GS&WR at Inchicore as a draughtsman in this same year, during McDonnell’s locomotive superintendence. He did not stay long with the GS&WR, leaving to join the Dublin Port and Docks Board. E. E. Joynt3 refers to Coey’s "long and arduous experience of civil engineering" in this employment and reports that it was here that on one occasion, Coey had descended to the bed of the River Liffey in a diving suit but lost hold and sight of the guide rope. Apparently he was groping round in murky water for a half-hour before he managed to surface. By 1880, Coey had returned to the GS&WR and was appointed to the post of Chief Draughtsman, again under McDonnell. In 1886, when Harold Ivatt took over from John Aspinall as Locomotive Superintendent, Coey was appointed Assistant Locomotive Superintendent and Works Manager at Inchicore. Harold Ivatt left in 1896 for the Great Northern Railway [England] and following the traditions of the GS&WR company, Robert Coey was appointed Locomotive Superintendent, with Richard Maunsell returning from the East India Railway to serve as Works Manager.

Murray and MacNeil4 describe the need and pressure at this time to produce ever more powerful locomotives to cope with increasing train weights. In the 1860’s, they state, trains were generally of less than 100 tons but by 1905 the down mail was leaving Kingsbridge with more than 250 tons behind the tender. Added to this the GS&WR was taking over other lines, principal of which was the Waterford, Limerick & Western and Inchicore was becoming increasingly responsible for the replacement and maintenance of the expanded fleets (Chacksfield, p.31).

While continuing to build Class 101 0-6-0 locomotives of McDonnell design for goods traffic and further suburban passenger 4-4-2T’s of Ivatt’s design, in 1900 Coey began production of the first of what was to be a series of designs of express 4-4-0’s. These locomotives were numbered 301-4, having 6 feet 7 inch driving wheels and 18 inch diameter cylinders with a 26 inch stroke. They were the first locomotives on the GS&WR to have a piston stroke greater than 24 inches. Coey adopted a standard boiler pressure of 160 lbs per square inch for his engines.

Another four engines followed in 1902, numbers 305-8. Chacksfield reports number 307 as being fitted with an experimental valve gear devised by J. Marshall of the Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, agricultural engineers. Performance was to be compared with number 305, equipped with standard link gear. Some interesting associations come to light here. Atkins reports that Coey’s retirement home in Harrogate was only 200 yards away from Marshall’s home. Maunsell also went on to experiment with another form of valve gear devised by Marshall on the Southern Railway in 1934 with Mogul number 1850 (see Chacksfield, p.88).

In 1903, a batch of six express locomotives were built by Neilson Reid in Scotland because of labour unrest at Inchicore. These were numbered 309-14 and the cylinder diameter in this design had been increased to 18½ inches. This larger cylinder size was also a feature of the 321 Class which started to appear in 1904 with 321 itself, 322-328 being built in 1905 and 329-332 in 1906. All of the 321 Class were built at Inchicore. Chacksfield (p.31) suggests that the most significant factor in the development of the type was a larger firebox in each successive class. In six years, Coey had provided a total of 26 new express locomotives. Murray and MacNeil report that Coey intended the large engines should have a specified life and then be replaced. This was not to be the case, and there was extensive rebuilding of the 321 Class. Coey also built a batch of eight passenger locomotives with smaller, 5 feet 8½ inch, driving wheels and outside frame bogies for mixed traffic work in Munster and in particular, the Rosslare route. These were numbered 333 - 340 and according to Chacksfield (p.35), used the same boiler as the 321 class. There was a similar pressure for more powerful goods engines. Having built the final batches of McDonnell’s Class 101 design in 1903, Coey introduced the 351 Class which was essentially a larger version of the 101 Class with a 26 inch stroke. Four of these engines were built in this same year, 1903. Also in 1903, the North British Locomotive Company supplied seven more 0-6-0 locomotives with the usual 5 feet 1¾ inch driving wheels, numbered 355-361 but these had 19 inch by 26 inch cylinders. These proved too heavy for the permanent way and were rebuilt as 2-6-0’s, according to Rowledge5 (p.74) in about 1907. In 1905, Inchicore produced an even larger goods locomotive, the 362 Class which still used 5 feet 1¾ inch driving wheels with larger cylinders, 19¼ inches by 26 inches, and more advanced yet, a 4-6-0 wheel arrangement. The first batch of four was numbered 362-365 and a second batch of two appeared in 1907 numbered 366 and 367. These were not considered to be successful engines and were rebuilt with extended smoke boxes to put more weight over the bogie wheels, which experience suggested, were too lightly loaded and prone to derailment. The final design of Coey goods engine emerged in 1909 as a 2-6-0 with 19 inch by 26 inch cylinders and the standard size goods engine driving wheel. These were numbered 368 - 371.

Joynt describes Coey as "one of best qualified and most capable engineers I ever met" and goes on to say that "Mr.Coey had a gift of sympathy and kindness of heart which was of a very rare quality" and that the period with Coey as Locomotive Superintendent and Maunsell as Works Manager was the "brightest in the history of Inchicore". Chacksfield (p.27) reinforces the view of Coey’s kindly nature where he describes how he intervened with the Company Secretary to delay the Directors’ visit to Inchicore in the summer of 1896 so that Maunsell could have space to deal with the arrangments for his marriage. Ryan’s6 view of Coey is as an "imaginative yet practical engineer [who] travelled to the US to observe and learn from locomotive practice there and his own designs and adaptations of others were to prove invaluable to the railway right up until the twilight of steam operation on CIE". Chacksfield (p.35) states that the visit to the United States was made in 1904 and was followed by the introduction of taper boilers on the 321 class. Experiments with superheating were started in 1908 and a Schmidt type superheater was fitted to one of the 4-4-0’s although Coey had retired by the time this entered service. Coey was not a well man at this time, increasingly incapacitated by "acute stress and migraine attacks" according to Chacksfield (p.33), and he found it necessary to retire. This he did in mid-1911 at the relatively young age of 60, when he moved to Scarborough. Atkins records that it was Coey’s wish to travel in his retirement. However, he had had a daughter, Maud, in the opening years of the new century and it was perhaps the need to attend to her education and then the outbreak of the first world war that delayed the achievement of this ambition. With Maud having reached the age of 18 and the war over, Coey spent 1919 in Switerland and then 3 years in Rome where he was joined by his brothers, James and Henry. He spent the last 10 years of his life living in Kent Road, on the Duchy estate in Harrogate and died at the age of 83 on 24th August 1934. Maud continued to live on in the family house until she died in 1993, not before having had contact with the National Railway Museum. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1	Atkins, Philip; An Inchicore Threesome, Backtrack, July 1997,pp. 396-399 2	Chacksfield, J. E.; Richard Maunsell - An Engineering Biography, The Oakwood Press, Usk, 1998 3	Joynt, E. E.; Reminiscences of an Irish Locomotive Works; The Locomotive, 15th September 1933 4	Murray, K. A. & D. B. MacNeil, The Great Southern and Western Railway, Irish Railway Record Society, 1976. 5	Rowledge, J. W. P., Irish Steam Locomotive Register, 1st Edition, 1993, Irish Traction Group 6	Ryan, Gregg; The Works - Celebrating 150 years of Inchicore Railway Works; Iarnrod Eireann, 1996