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Kevin Jones' Steam Index

Kirtley family (possibly Kirkley family)

Thomas Kirtley
Thomas Kirtley was born in Tanfield in 1810 and died from a brain tumour in Brighton on 16 November 1847  where he was locomotive superintendent (Marshall). he had previously been locomotive superintendent of the North Midland Railway, founder of Thomas Kirtley & Co., a locomotive building firm in Warrington building locomotives between 1837 and 1841 and an engine driver on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway with his brother Matthew. In the interim Thomas was Engineer of the Brandling Junction and the Newcastle & Darlington Railways in 1844 (the source for this being the report on an accident which took place at Boldon Lane, near Shields on 8 October 1844, which is contained in the Board of Trade Railway Dept reports for 1844-45, Appendices I and II, pp55-63 (copy at the NRM Search Engine) Neil Mackay).

Matthew Kirtley
Matthew Kirtley was born at Clough Dene, Tanfield in County Durham on 6 February 1813. His father, Henry was also born in Clough Dene in 1768 and died on 13 December 1843. the son of a colliery overman or foreman. He joined the S&DR as a fireman in 1826, joined the L&MR briefly and worked as a fireman or driver and saw the Rainhill Trials. He became a driver/fireman on Warrington to Newton Railway which had opened in 1832. In about 1832 he was employed on the Leeds & Selby Railway from where he was dismissed due to organising a strike. There are many reports that he drove the first London & Birmingham Railway train into London, but Don Asher (Midland Railway Society Journal, 2018 (68), 5-11) considers that this is most improbable. In 1839 he was appointed Locomotive Foreman at Hampton on the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway, and on 2 June married  Ann Pelham at Walford in London. In 1842 he was made Locomotive Superintendent of the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway and he moved to Birmingham. In 1844, following the formation of the Midland Railway by amalgamation Kirtley became its Locomotive Superintendent, probably through the influence of the Stephensons.
As first locomotive superintendent of the recently-formed Midland Railway, Matthew Kirtley's first task was to enlarge, improve, and standardize the ninety-odd locomotive stock handed down by the three constituent companies, while at the same time enlarging the facilities at Derby to enable the Company to become less dependent on outside enterprises both for the repair and the maintenance of its locomotives. His first locomotives followed previous patterns; for example, his first passenger machines were basically of the Jenny Lind type, but later in his career he built very sound locomotives of his own design; among these were his long lived 2-4-0 machines of the 800 class, and his double-framed 0-6-0, some of which survived until railway nationalization. In 1856, with C. Markham, Kirtley devised a firebox suitable for burning coal; this used the inclined brick-arch, later so well-known, with a deflector plate sloping downwards from the firedoor. By this means volatile matter escaping with the hot gases was combusted as it moved around the brick arch and mixed with air entering by the firedoor. Kirtley held office from 1844 to his death on 24 May 1873 at Litchurch. Previously he had been locomotive superintendent of the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway, one of the constituents of the Midland. His brother Thomas Kirtley, who became locomotive superintendent of the LBSCR for a few months in 1847, was the last locomotive superintendent of another Midland constituent, the North Midland. There is a Matthew Kirtley Scholarship for the University of Manchester's School of Engineering: Sir Frederic Calland Williams won this in 1929. He appears to have been a very kind man. Obituary: Proc. Instn Mech. Engrs., 1874, 25, 16-. James Allport and Charles Markham were pallbearers at his funeral. There is a Blue Plaque memorial to Matthew Kirtley at Clough Dene opened on 24 May 2019 (Midland Railway Society Newsletter, 2019 (128).
Some of the false information about Kirtley was promulagted by Veritas Vincit (John Robertson) in a letter to  The Railway Times dated 14 August 1843 that had to be refuted by Kirtley himself. 
Hunt: Backtrack, 17, 191
See also Dewrance. Locomotive Mag., 1943, 49, 180.

Contributions to other's papers
Siemens, C. William. On Le Chatelier's plan of using counter-pressure steam as a break [sic] in locomotive engines. Proc. Instn Mech Engrs., 1870, 21, 21-36. Disc.: 47-9 + Plates 1-5.
A preliminary trial of the counter-pressure plan had been made a "short time ago" with a light tank engine on the Midland Railway, and they had been "much surprised" at the results: in consequence a larger tank engine had been fitted with the counter-pressure apparatus, and trials had been made on the Lickey incline of 1 in 37. The engine was a very heavy one, intended expressly for working that incline, its weight in working order being 36½ tons; it was a six-wheel coupled engine, with 4 feet wheels, and cylinders 16½ inches diameter by 24 inches stroke. Several experiments were made, the last of which may be regarded as a destructive test where the packings were burnt and one cylinder got "rather hot". On the previous experiment a train of six loaded coal wagons weighing 58.61 tons, and two incline brake wagons weighing 21.20 tons and at 16 miles/hour the water cock was opened nearly half a turn and kept open for 5 seconds; the speed was thereby reduced in ¾mile to about 3 miles/hour. Again at 20 miles/hour the water cock was opened a quarter turn for 6 or 8 seconds, which reduced the speed in about ¾ mile to a mere crawl. No water issued from the chimney top.

Patents
12210/1848 Railway-wheels. 11 July 1848

See: J. B. Radford, Derby Works and Midland Locomotives (1971)
Nock, O.S. Railway enthusuast's encyclopedia

William Kirtley
Nephew of Matthew Kirtley of the Midland Railway. Marshall states that he was born in Warrington on 14 October 1849 and died in Clapham, London on 7 October 1919. His father had owned a locomotive manufacturing business in Warrington, but this had failed prior to William's birth. William was a pupil at Derby under his uncle, from April 1854. He held several posts on the Midland, including that of foreman at the Midland depot in King's Cross and from January 1864 Workshops Superintendent at Derby until he was appointed Locomotive Carriage & Wagon Superintendent on the LCDR in succession to Martley. Bradley records that at the Board Meeting on 12 March 1874 four candidates had been considered: two (Appleby and Lindsley were rejected as lacking experience - the other was Sacré), and Kirtley was offered the post at £800 per annum. He designed a powerful 0-4-4T (R class) which Bradley considered to be the best suburban tank engines South of London. This very thorough engineer was a consultant to the Hull & Barnsley Railway between 1883 and 1885. He resigned when the LCDR was amalgamated with the South Eastern Rly in 1895. MICE. See also obituary Locomotive Mag., 1919, 25, 195...

Webb, Ben: Locomotive Engineers of the Southern Railway. 1946.
Bradley, D.L.: The locomotive history of the London Chatham and Dover Railway. London: RCTS, 1979.

Henry Kirtley
London Divisional Locomotive Superintendent: letter from David Hyde, Br. Rly., J., 1986, 2, 172-3.