 Ruston & Hornsby logo | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Engineering |
| Predecessor | Ruston, Proctor and Company |
| Founded | 1918 |
| Fate | Purchased byEnglish Electric |
| Headquarters | Waterside South,Lincoln,England |
| Products | Diesel engines,Locomotives,Steam engines,Gas turbines |
| Parent | English Electric (1966–1968) GEC (1968–2003) Siemens (2003–) |
| Subsidiaries | Ruston-Bucyrus |
Ruston & Hornsby was an industrial equipment manufacturer inLincoln, England founded in 1918. The company is best known as a manufacturer ofnarrow andstandard gaugediesel locomotives and also ofsteam shovels. Other products includedcars,steam locomotives and a range ofinternal combustion engines, and latergas turbines. It is now a subsidiary ofSiemens, its Diesel business went toMAN Energy Solutions that in 2025 still provides support for Ruston-engines.[1]
Proctor & Burton was established in 1840, operating as millwrights and engineers. It becameRuston, Proctor and Company in 1857 whenJoseph Ruston joined them, acquiring limited liability status in 1899. From 1866 it built a number of four and six-coupledtank locomotives, one of which was sent to theParis Exhibition in 1867. In 1868 it built five0-6-0 tank engines for theGreat Eastern Railway to the design ofSamuel Waite Johnson. Three of these were converted to crane tanks, two of which lasted until 1952, aged eighty-four. Among the company's output were sixteen forArgentina and some for T. A. Walker, the contractor building theManchester Ship Canal.
During theFirst World War, Ruston assisted in thewar effort, producing some of the firsttanks and a number of aircraft, notably theSopwith Camel.
On 11 September 1918, Ruston, Proctor and Company merged withRichard Hornsby & Sons ofGrantham to becomeRuston and Hornsby Ltd (R&H). Hornsby was the world leader inheavy oil engines, having been building them since 1891, a full eight years beforeRudolph Diesel's engine was produced commercially.
Ruston built oil and diesel engines in sizes from a few HP up to large industrial engines. Several R&H engines are on display at theAnson Engine Museum atPoynton,Manchester and also atInternal Fire - Museum of Power, Tanygroes near Cardigan.[2] The company also diversified into the manufacture ofpetrol engines, again from around 1.5 hp upwards, some of these designs were later manufactured under licence byThe Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company.
The firm were builders ofsteam engines andportable steam engines for many years, mainly for the agricultural market; however, they also created steam rollers which were used for making roads and owned by contractors and councils.
In the First World War, the company made around 2,750 aeroplanes and 3,000aero engines. The 1,000thSopwith Camel (B7380), built at the plant in 1917,[3][4] was named theWings ofHorus. The company built around 1,600 Sopwith Camels, 250Sopwith 1½ Strutters, and 200Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2s. The company, as Ruston & Proctor, was the largest British builder of aero-engines in the war, and built the largest bomb of the war. One of the directors, Frederick Howard Livens, had a son who was an army officer on the front line. CaptainWilliam Howard Livens was sent to Lincoln, where he developed theLivens Projector and theLivens Large Gallery Flame Projector.
Neighbouring manufacturerClayton & Shuttleworth also built planes.
In 1919, Colonel J.S. Ruston was inspired to create agarden suburb in Lincoln – theSwanpool Garden Suburb. His vision was to provide affordable houses for his workers, with easy access to healthy outdoor recreation, such as a pleasure ground, cricket ground and swimming baths. Ruston purchased 25 acres of the Boultham Hall estate and established the Swanpool Co-operative Society. ArchitectsHennell and James of London created the designs for the houses, which were built between April 1919 and September 1920. The vision for the new suburb included a technical institute, church and schools. After running into financial difficulties the development was sold in 1925 to Swanpool Garden Suburb Ltd, a private company, but only 113 of the planned 2–3000 houses had been constructed and no more were built.[5]
After the First World War the company attempted to diversify and one outcome was the Ruston-Hornsby car. Two versions were made, a 15.9 hp with aDorman 2614 cc engine and a larger 20 hp model with 3308 cc engine of their own manufacture. The cars were, however, very heavy, being built on a 9-inch chassis[clarification needed], and extremely expensive – the cheapest was around £440 and the most expensive nearly £1,000, and within a few years other makers were selling similar vehicles that weighed only 3/4 ton and cost around £120–200 – and never reached the hoped-for production volumes. About 1,500 were made between 1919 and 1924, two of which are still retained by Siemens on the Lincoln site. One is fully restored in running/driving condition, while the second example is still awaiting attention.[6]
The R-H car was developed by the chief engineer, Edward Boughton, who joined the company in 1916 after helping to develop thetank. Later he would start theAutomotive Products Group (APG) inLeamington Spa in 1920 which madeBorg & Beck clutches, Lockheed hydraulic brakes, andPurolatorfuel filters.
In September 1944, when the GermanWehrmachtOB West headquarters atSaint-Germain-en-Laye (nearParis) were captured, previously commanded byField MarshalGünther von Kluge (from 2 July 1944), they were found to be powered by Ruston diesel engines.
It built the first prototype of theValiant tank in 1944. The Grantham site built theMatilda II tank.
Ruston & Hornsby was a major producer of small and mediumdiesel engines for land and marine applications. The company began to builddiesel locomotives in 1931 (and continued up until 1967). It was a pioneer and major developer in the industrial application of small (up to 10,000 kW) heavy dutygas turbines from the 1950s onwards. In the 1960s it was Europe's leading supplier of land-based gas turbines. It introduced Dry Low Emission (DLE) combustion technology in the mid-1990s becoming market leaders.
The initiation of the production and design of gas turbines was largely due toBob Feilden[7] CBE (1917–2004) who joined the company in 1946. Gas turbines were first produced in 1952.
TheBeevor Foundry on Beevor Street was opened[8] in 1950 by General Sir William Joseph Slim (later Field MarshalWilliam Slim, 1st Viscount Slim), and claimed to be the biggest foundry in Europe.
In the 1950s, it was producing one turbine a fortnight. The company sold its 1,000th gas turbine in July 1977. It won theMacRobert Award in December 1983 for the Tornado gas turbine. The company'sCambridge-educatedEgyptian chairman, Dr Waheeb Rizk OBE, was concurrently President of theIMechE from 1984 to 1985 and also President of theInternational Council on Combustion Engines from 1973 to 1977. He was Managing Director from 1971 to 1983 and developed theW layout for gas turbine power stations that were used as emergency generating stations for theNational Grid, also known aspeaking power plants. These had to be developed due to prolonged electricityblackouts in south-east England in 1961 caused bycascading failure. It built the first gas turbine to burnNorth Sea gas, for theEastern Gas Board inWatford. In 1981 it won an order to power theUrengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod pipeline (Trans-Siberian Pipeline).
Research work was done in conjunction with theUniversity of Sussex and with Cranfield University in the 1980s, where extensive development was undertaken of the combustion chamber and of the gallery to the turbine.
Industrial Gas Turbines of note manufactured at the Lincoln plant:
Until the late 1960s, it producedThermax boilers. The boiler business was sold for £1.75m to Cochrane & Co ofAnnan, Dumfries and Galloway in October 1968, that was bought by John Thompson ofWolverhampton four months later. It was bought byClarke Chapman in 1970.
In 1957, it was the first company to fit a mainRoyal Navy ship (HMSCumberland) with a (experimental) gas turbine.
In 1959, it opened a new type of power plant using waste sewage gas that powered eight turbines at Britain's biggest sewage works at theNorthern Outfall Sewer atBeckton inEast London. This was an 18,000horsepower combined heat and power plant.
The company pioneeredcombined heat and power schemes. The company began this technology inCortemaggiore,Emilia-Romagna in 1956 at theAgip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli) oil refinery.[9] By the late 1960s, Ruston & Hornsby CHP units were installed in Australia, Germany, the US, South America, and the Middle East.
In the 1970s, these CHP schemes were not as well developed as today because electricity companies were not interested in developing a market that would provide direct competition to themselves. CHP schemes were then known astotal energy schemes, which comprisedexhaust heat recovery. The company won theQueen's Award for Enterprise: International Trade (Export) in 1977, 1978 and 1982.
The largeSinger factory inClydebank, which employed 11,000 people, was notably powered by Rustons turbines. TheKing Faisal Specialist Hospital was installed with a CHP unit in 1975.Whitehall[clarification needed] in London is heated and has its electricity from a CHP unit built in the late 1990s.
In 1940 R&H bought a controlling interest in the well-knownPaxman diesel engine company ofColchester inEssex. In the later stages of the war, Paxman built 4,000 diesel engines that powered all the British-builttank landing craft (LCT) onD-Day. It supplied diesel engines forBritish Rail locomotives in the 1960s. From 1954 to 1964 the company's Managing Director was Geoffrey Bone[10] who had been part of the Power Jets team, and whose father Victor Bone was Managing Director of R&H from 1944 until his death. It was due to Geoffrey Bone that Bob Feilden was recruited for R&H who subsequently formed the gas turbine manufacturing operations.
In 1934 the company had formedAveling-Barford from two companiesAveling & Porter of Kent andBarford & Perkins of Peterborough, using a former site of R&H.[11] The company closed its Grantham diesel-engine factory in 1963.
In November 1966, R&H was purchased byEnglish Electric.Robert Inskip, 2nd Viscount Caldecote became Chairman of the company. Subsidiaries of R&H includedBergius-Kelvin ofGlasgow,Davey, Paxman & Co ofColchester (now owned byMAN Energy Solutions) and Alfred Wiseman Gears inGrantham.
Up to that point, the company had been listed on theLondon Stock Exchange. This formed Britain's second largest diesel engine group, second toHawker-Lister. From that moment on it was a subsidiary of a larger company. It became known as the Ruston Turbine Division of English Electric Diesels.
Following the acquisition by English Electric the production of large Ruston engines was moved to the English ElectricVulcan Foundry factory inNewton-le-Willows. The production of the smaller engine range was moved toStafford where it became a part of the Dorman Diesel range. Turbine technology was concentrated in Lincoln withNapier turbochargers moving fromLiverpool to Lincoln in 1967. In 1969 the Lincoln site became Ruston Gas Turbines. The name was then changed to European Gas Turbines in 1989 following the merger ofGEC andAlcatel Alsthom. Later this business was sold toSiemens. The gas turbine business is still in the old Ruston factory in the centre of Lincoln.[12]
R&H was included in the purchase of English Electric by theGeneral Electric Company (GEC) in 1968. By the end of 1969 the Lincoln subsidiary company was known as Ruston Gas Turbines.
The Ruston Paxman diesels division became known as Ruston Diesels, and moved to the former English Electric diesel works. The former Power Jets plant atWhetstone became a research plant for the gas turbine division of GEC. GEC then merged its heavy engineering division with Alsthom of France, becoming part of GEC-Alsthom in 1989, which changed its name toAlstom in 1998, when the Lincoln subsidiary was known as EGT (European Gas Turbines).
In 2003, Alstom sold its gas turbine division (in Lincoln andFranche-Comté) toSiemens.[13] The site of the former headquarters at Thorngate House, on the opposite side of theA15, was redeveloped as residential flats.
When owned by GEC in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many (if not the vast majority) of Lincoln engineering firms did not survive difficult financial conditions. This included Clayton Dewandre, (that made vacuum and air-pressure brake servos and associated equipment for commercial vehicles). WH Dorman had been bought by English Electric in 1961 and took over an old R&H factory on Beevor Street. Dormans would be bought byPerkins in 1993, then closed in 1995.[14]
Only the GEC group of companies in Lincoln (including Dormans) survived the 1970s. The company actually expanded during this difficult time, helped by the fact that 80% of its engines were exported and theNorth Sea oil industry was rapidly expanding at this time, which required portable electricity generation and heating.
The original Ruston works (Waterside South, Lincoln) focused on Gas Turbine manufacture from 1967 becoming the head office of Ruston Gas Turbines.Napier Turbochargers, that had been owned by English Electric since 1942, moved to the site from Liverpool.
With the change of ownership in 1989 the name was changed to European Gas Turbines Ltd. Following a spell as Alstom Gas Turbines Ltd, the company is now known as Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd. The design and research centre in Lincoln opened in May 1957. Siemens announced in September 2009 that Gas Turbine packaging operations were to move abroad with the Lincoln site becoming a feeder plant.
The plant was taken over byWilliam Sinclair Horticulture, who ceased using it in 2015. The building was demolished in 2019.[15]
TheVulcan Foundry inNewton-le-Willows inMerseyside was known asRuston Diesels (formerly Ruston Paxman Diesels) until 2002. It was taken over byMAN Diesel on 12 June 2000.[16]
Rustons – in its various incarnations – was always an engine producer rather than a machine producer, and it could be considered that they simply produced machines in order to sell engines.[citation needed]
| Works No, | Image | Build Year | Model | Gauge | Original Owner | Current Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 313394 | 1952 | 165DS | Standard | New to Associated Ethyl Co. Ltd, Amlwch, Anglesey later became Associated Octel Co. Ltd | Preserved Telford Steam Railway On hire to Chasewater railway | ||
| 458959 | 1961 | 48DS | Standard | AEI Lamp & Lighting Harworth, Notts |
Heritage railways with Ruston & Hornsby locomotives include :
Australia
Denmark
France
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
New Zealand
Norway
United Kingdom
Preserved marine engines include :
| Former subsidiaries and divisions | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Former joint ventures | |||||
| Predecessors and acquisitions | |||||
| Successors | |||||
| Products |
| ||||
| People | |||||
| Other | |||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
