George Tosh (1813–1900) was a Scottish engineer and metallurgist who pioneered the use of steel in certain aspects of steam locomotive design.
[1] His earlier career is not known (his obituaries speak of an early association with the Stephensons and the Stockton and Darlington Railway), but from children's birthplaces in census returns he was apparently resident in Newcastle by 1839, in Parton, Cumberland, during 1843–1848, and in Maryport by 1851.
[3] During his tenure at the Maryport & Carlisle Railway, Tosh was the first to use steel for construction of a locomotive boiler (in 1862), where previously wrought iron had been the material of choice.
It was not the first such design in the world – that accolade belonging to a Canadian locomotive, two years earlier – but it was certainly a first in Britain, and pre-empted the London & North Western Railway's developments of the technology.
He was married and had at least seven children; at least one of whom, Edmund George, after practising as an analytical chemist, followed his father's footsteps into the iron business.