Daniel Kinnear Clark

Daniel Kinnear Clark
Daniel Kinnear Clark, 1854
Born	17 July 1822 Edinburgh
Died	22 January 1896(1896-01-22) (aged 73)
Nationality	Scottish
Occupation	Engineer
Engineering career
Discipline	Railway mechanical engineer
Institutions	Institution of Civil Engineers
Employer(s)	Great North of Scotland Railway

Daniel Kinnear Clark (17 July 1822 – 22 January 1896) was a Scottish consulting railway engineer. He served as Locomotive Superintendent to the Great North of Scotland Railway between 1853 and 1855, and also wrote comprehensive books on railway engineering matters.

Clark was born at Edinburgh on 17 July 1822. He served an apprenticeship with Thomas Edgington & Son, a Glasgow ironworks. He then worked for another private firm, followed by the North British Railway. In 1851, he set up as a consulting engineer in London; he was 30 years old. He became a Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1854.

The Great North of Scotland Railway (GNoSR) had been established in 1845 with the aim of building a railway to connect Aberdeen with Inverness. Although authorised in 1846, construction did not begin until 1852, with the first section of line being opened in 1854. While the line was still under construction, it became necessary to consider the provision of locomotives in time for the opening. Workshops at Kittybrewster for the repair of locomotives were under construction, and Clark was appointed Superintendent of the Locomotive Works in October 1853. For the opening of the line, he designed two basically similar classes of 2-4-0 tender locomotives, one with driving wheels 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) in diameter for passenger service, and the other, for goods trains, having 5-foot (1.5 m) driving wheels. Seven passenger engines and five goods were ordered from William Fairbairn & Sons of Manchester, since Kittybrewster Works was not intended for locomotive construction: no new engines were built there until 1887. The first section of the line (from Kittybrewster to Huntly) was opened for traffic on 12 September 1854, but by October only five of the passenger engines had been delivered, and just two more had arrived by the time of his resignation; the five goods engines arrived a few months later.