Career
He was Locomotive Superintendent of the LNWR"s Southern Division at Wolverton railway works from 1847 to 1862 and oversaw the design of the "Bloomer" and "Patent" locomotives. McConnell was born at Fermoy, Company Cork, Ireland, on 1 January 1815.
Since the Rainhill Trials in 1829, it had been accepted that the smoke emitted by burning coal was a nuisance.
Railway companies accepted the need to burn coke (a smokeless fuel) in their locomotives, but this was much more expensive than coal, and several locomotive engineers sought a method by which coal could be burned smokelessly. One such engineer was McConnell, who designed a boiler suitable for coal in 1852.
McConnell died at Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England, on 11 June 1883.