The Irrepressible Mr Binko: the thread about the Engineer and Edinburgh’s first Electric Railway

My sources tell me it is was Electrification Friday and although I was saving a picture for another day it seems right to share it now. Behold! Mr Binko’s Electric Railway!

The passengers in the car are the Prince of Wales (future King Edward VII) and his wife Princess Alexandra, Princess of Wales. Regular viewers may recognise the backdrop as Donaldson’s Hospital.

It was the setting of the First International Forestry Exhibition of 1884 – held in a grand, wooden, temporary pavilion on the Hospital’s lawns – and that was the reason for Mr Binko bringing his railway to there. When the Royal Party toured the exhibition and rode his railway on 22nd August they became the first British Royals to be moved by electric power.

The carriage was named Alexandra after the Princess of Wales and was made locally by coachbuilders John Hislop & Son. The carriage was “richly upholstered in silk plush of the Royal scarlet, while the sides and roof were elegantly decorated. In the centre of the roof a brilliant prismatic lamp was placed, lit within by electricity… and by an ingenious arrangement a beautiful bouquet on the centre table was lighted up by miniature lamps on a button being pressed”. The only other time the carriage was officially used was for the visit of William Ewart Gladstone – four time Prime Minister – and a (grand) son of Leith. He is seen on the right in the car below.

Zooming in, we see some of the occupants seem more enthusiastic than others. Mr Binko is seen on the right of shot, he with dark hair and moustache infront of the carriage window and clutching his top hat.

In the background we can make out a showbill to do with Electricity. An experimental display of electric lights was also part of the Exhibition.

This was the first electric vehicle in Edinburgh and its inventor and promoter was the splendidly named Mr Binko. Henry Bock Binko was born in Vienna in 1836, becoming a naturalised British citizen in 1881. He brought to Edinburgh a modified version of an electric locomotive that he had exhibited in London in 1882. His experiments were a few years behind Werner von Siemens who had exhibited the worlds first practical electric railway in Berlin in 1879. In 1883, Magnus Volk opened the first electric railway to the public in Britain with his Volk’s Electric Railway on the sea front in Brighton (remarkably, it’s still going!). However, as far back as 1842 the Scottish inventor Robert Davidson had trialled an electrically powered locomotive using batteries on the Edinburgh to Glasgow Railway, his Galvani could unfortunately only propel itself at walking speed and could pull no useful load. The inability to recharge its batteries rendered it completely impractical.

Binko was described as a chemist, and seems to have been a serial inventor and patentee, intent on making his fortune by licensing out his contraptions to others. His Spectrograph achieved some success, and it was advertised for a reasonable sum as a money making scheme, the idea being people could get one and then duplicate photographs for sale by using it. Binko later fell out with the licensees.

The locomotive brought to Edinburgh was called Ohm and was a rebuild of the Volta that he had exhibited in London. “The line was eventually opened as a ½ mile circular route in the grounds, the charge being 3d (three pence) for the 2.5 minute journey.” 30,000 passengers were carried by the railway during its time at the exhibition. The Railway News reported;

It has been met with extensive public patronage, besides being honoured by a journey taken by the Prince and Princess of Wales and their family and subsequently by Mr and Mrs Gladstone. The length of the line laid down at Edinburgh is about double the length of that at the Crystal Palace and traverses the length of the exhibition building on the outside twice, besides making a wide sweep for turning.

Power came from a stationary 8hp Robey steam engine coupled to a dynamo which supplied DC electric power through the rails. Speed was changed by resistors built into the locomotive. The locomotive or “guiding car” weighed about 2 tons and that the whole train weighed 6 tons when loaded. It could pull up to 3 passenger cars, each with capacity for 10, and it was noted that each car had its own motor, so the train was what we would nowadays call a DC EMU or Direct Current Electric Multiple Unit.

All was not well for Binko and his railway however. Construction over-ran and it was not ready for the opening. When it finally got going on July 17th, technically it was a triumph but financially proved a disaster. Binko was unable to pay his creditors, having borrowed heavily to finance the scheme, and one of them seized his railway before it was even in operation. An arrangement was made with the creditor that he would lease it back off of them for £650 to work off the debt, payable over 13 weeks in instalments. However, even though he was making up to £20 a day (approximately £2,800 in 2022) off of ticket sales, he remained seriously in debt and the creditors lost patience. Well before the end of the exhibition they advertised the whole thing for sale – obviously they had decided that Binko could or would never pay them what he owed and storage costs would be too high. On 30th September the electric railway was cancelled and Binko locked out from using it any more.

On 10th October 1884, Binko was taken to court in London and bankrupted, still owing the creditor £100. Being in Edinburgh with his railway, he did not appear in person to defend himself. The court heard that now that the exhibition had ended, Binko did not have any way to recoup any more money from it to settle his debts, but had not provided any accounts of his income from it during the exhibition. The court adjourned to give him time to prepare the accounts and to appear in person.

But that wasn’t the end for Binko in Edinburgh. The reason he hadn’t come to London to face court was that somehow he managed to convince the Edinburgh Street Tramways Company to undertake an experiment in electric traction. He somehow managed to convince his creditors to allow him the use of the steam engine, dynamo and mechanical components from the Ohm. A few hundred yards of copper strip were laid between the horse tram rails between the exhibition at Donaldson’s Hospital and Haymarket Station, the moving parts from the Ohm were bodged into a horse tram of the Street Tramways Co. and the whole lot was hooked up to the dynamo and steam engine. On 11th October 1884, with 10 passengers on board, Mr Binko’s Electric Tram became the first electric tram to run in the British Isles when it haltingly made the short journey between Donaldson’s and Haymarket. Three journeys were made, the third (and final) hauling a second horse tramcar, and then no more was heard of Henry Bock Binko or his experiments in electrical traction.

For now.

But once again this was not the end of the irrepressible Mr Binko and his experiments in electrical traction. He resurfaced in 1886 in Great Yarmouth where he tried to start up a seaside railway, but ended up being tried for unlawfully obtaining credit while being an undeclared bankrupt – it having transpired that he was bankrupted in 1871. He was eventually acquitted, largely on the grounds of his reputation from the 1884 railway in Edinburgh being taken in evidence that his schemes were serious and practical and not just a swindle. He died in London in 1911, being recorded on censuses in the last 10 years of his life as being employed as an electrical engineer.

Electric railways returned to Edinburgh the same year at the 1886 International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art held in the Meadows.

This scheme had nothing to do with Henry Binko and seems to have been something of a collaboration, directed by the energetic architect, builder and local politician Sir James Gowans, who was the organiser of the exhibition. The scheme is described as being a line 500 yards long, with electricity supplied to a central live rail by a 7 horsepower static steam engine. An electric locomotive hauled two tram cars sent by the Northern Metropolitan Tramway Company, a double decker with 20 inside and 26 outside upstairs and an open single decker with 25 seats. It could make 10 miles per hour. The steam engine was by Marshall & Co. of Gainsborough and the rails were made to Gowans’ own design (he had engineered Edinburgh’s first horse tramway some 15 years before), being supplied complimentary from a foundry in Barrow-in-Furness. The electric equipment was provided by King, Brown & Co. of Rosebank in Edinburgh. The fare was 2d and in the course of the exhibition it carried 80,000 passengers.

Despite all the engravings and photos taken at the exhibition, I have struggled to track down a good picture of the electric railway, but you can see a bit of it in the corner of the larger photo of the Exhibition pavilion. You can make out a sheeted vehicle, possibly the tram car, on the left behind the flag pole. The rails run parallel to the fence, off to the right.

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No zucchini today!

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July 17

This day in history:

• 1489 – Sikandar Lodi succeeds Bahlul Khan Lodi as Sultan of Delhi.
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• 2014 – A French regional train on the Pau-Bayonne line crashes into a high-speed train near the town of Denguin, resulting in at least 25 injuries.
• 1968 – Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba'ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.

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Holidays:

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Random Article of the day:

The Facility

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BRATTLEBORO
DOWNTOWN MARCH
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MARCH IN PEACE
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Eightysix47

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