R and W Hawthorn Ltd was a locomotive manufacturer in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, from 1817 until 1885.
Locomotive building
Robert Hawthorn first began business at Forth Bank Works in 1817, building marine and stationary steam engines. In 1820, his brother William joined him and the firm became R and W Hawthorn. Possibly after having attended the Rainhill Trials in 1829, they became interested in locomotives, and sold their first engine in 1831. Printed and online sources claim this to be Mödling for the Vienna Gloggnitz railway. That is wrong, that locomotive was delivered in 1841. The 1831 order was placed by the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
There followed a number of orders for the Stockton and Darlington Railway. They were great innovators - not always successfully - and their locos had many original features.
In 1838 two were built for the broad gauge Great Western Railway to the patent of T. E. Harrison, who later became the chief engineer for the North Eastern Railway. These could be viewed as the forerunners of the Garratt locomotive, with the boiler carried on a separate carriage to the cylinders and valvegear. This allowed the boiler to be large and low down, being carried on smaller wheels, while the driving wheels could be up to in diameter. With little weight on the drivers, adhesion was poor, but they ran very smoothly up to . However, the flexible steam coupling gave a great deal of trouble and they were withdrawn.
