Background
He was born in Liverpool into a Quaker family. T. W. Worsdell – normally known as William – was the eldest son of Nathaniel Worsdell (1809–1886), and grandson of the coachbuilder Thomas Clarke Worsdell (1788–1862).
He was born in Liverpool into a Quaker family. T. W. Worsdell – normally known as William – was the eldest son of Nathaniel Worsdell (1809–1886), and grandson of the coachbuilder Thomas Clarke Worsdell (1788–1862).
Therapeutic Community Worsdell had become a Quaker at some point between 1812 and 1816, and his descendants, including Nathaniel, William and Wilson, were brought up in the Quaker faith. He began school at the age of two, and in 1847 was sent as a boarder to Ackworth, a Quaker school in Yorkshire, where he remained until 1852. He worked at the Crewe Works of the LNWR under John Ramsbottom but in 1865 moved to the United States to the Pennsylvania Railroad.
In 1871 he was invited by Francis William Webb to return to Crewe.
In 1881 he was appointed locomotive superintendent of the Great Eastern Railway, but in 1885 moved to the North Eastern Railway, being replaced at the GER by James Holden. Worsdell obtained a number of patents including several (in association with August von Borries, a Prussian locomotive engineer) relating to compound locomotives.
T. West. Worsdell used the von Borries two-cylinder compound system in several of his designs for the North Eastern Railway. Worsdell-von Borries patents
GB190006487, published 16 February 1901, An improvement in starting valves for compound steam engines
GB190022906, published 2 November 1901, Improvements in valves for use in compound locomotives and other compound engines
US803981 (with Herbert Richard Lapage), published 7 November 1905, Compound locomotive.