John Aspinall

Sir John Audley Frederick Aspinall (25 August 1851 – 19 January 1937) was a British mechanical engineer who served as Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Southern and Western and Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways. He introduced vacuum brakes to his locomotives in Ireland, a trend which was followed in Britain, and designed several locomotives. He was also president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Aspinall was born on 25 August 1851 in Liverpool to a Roman Catholic judge. He attended the Roman Catholic boarding school of Beaumont College, Berkshire before being apprenticed to engineers John Ramsbottom and Francis Webb of the London and North Western Railway in 1868. He was sent by...