Automobile Biographies
W. O. Carrett
Noted investogator of carriage with real self-moving fire engine.
In 1860, George Salt, of Saltshire, England, employed W. O. Carrett, of the firm of Carrett, Marshall & Co., proprietors of the Gun Foundry at Leeds, to design and build a steam pleasure carriage for him. The carriage was first shown and exhibited at the Royal Show held in Leeds, 1861, and likewise at the London Exhibition, 1862. It had two steam cylinders, six inches in diameter and w^ith eight-inch stroke. The boiler was of the locomotive multitubular type, two feet six inches in diameter, and five feet three inches long. It had a working pressure of one hundred and fifty pounds per square inch, the test pressure being three hundred pounds. The locomotive was mounted upon two driving wheels, each four feet in diameter, made of steel, and a leading wheel was three feet in diameter. Seats were provided for nine persons, including the steerer and the fireman. The traveling speed was fifteen miles an hour; and the weight of the carriage, fully loaded, was five tons. Motion was communicated from the crank shaft to the driving axle through spur gearing. The English magazine, Engineering, in an article in June, 1866, said: “This steam carriage, made by Carrett, Marshall & Co., was probably the most remarkable locomotive ever made. True, it did little good for itself as a steam carriage, and its owner at last made a present of it much as an Eastern prince might send a friend a white elephant to that enthusiastic amateur, Mr. Frederick Hodges, who christened it the Fly-by-Night, and who did fly, and no mistake, through the Kentish villages when most honest people were in their beds. Its enterprising owner was repeatedly pulled up and fined, and to this day his exploits are remembered against him.” Hodges ran the engine eight hundred miles; he had six summonses in six weeks, and one was for running the engine thirty miles an hour. It was afterwards altered to resemble a fire engine and the passengers were equipped like firemen, wearing brass helmets. The device did not deceive the police, and finally the carriage was made over into a real self-moving fire engine.
