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CHAPTER V.

THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE GEORGE STEPHENSON BEGINS ITS

IMPROVEMENT.

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THE rapid increase in the coal-trade of the Tyne about the beginning of the present century had the effect of stimulating the ingenuity of mechanics, and encouraging them to devise improved methods of transporting the coal from the pits to the shipping-places. From our introductory chapter, it will have been observed that the improvements which had thus far been effected were confined almost entirely to the road. The railway wagons still continued to be drawn by horses. By improving and flattening the tram-way, considerable economy in horse-power had been secured; but, unless some more effective method of mechanical traction could be devised, it was clear that railway improvement had almost reached its limits.

Notwithstanding Trevithick's comparatively successful experiment with the first railway locomotive on the Merthyr Tydvil tram-road in 1804, described in a former chapter, he seems to have taken no farther steps to bring his invention into notice. He was probably discouraged by the breakage of the cast-iron plates, of which the road was formed, which were crushed under the load of his engine, and could not induce the owners of the line to relay it with better materials so as to give his locomotive a fair trial.

An imaginary difficulty, also, seems to have tended, among other obstacles, to prevent the adoption of the locomotive, viz., the idea that, if a heavy weight were placed behind the engine, the "grip" or "bite" of its smooth wheels upon the equally smooth iron rail must necessarily be so slight that they would whirl round upon it, and, consequently, that the machine would not make any progress.* Hence Trevithick, in his patent, pro

* The same fallacy seems long to have held its ground in France; for M. Granier tells us that some time after the first of George Stephenson's locomotives had been

CHAP. V.]

THE WYLAM WAGON-WAY.

153

vided that the periphery of the driving-wheels should be made rough by the projection of bolts or cross-grooves, so that the adhesion of the wheels to the road might thereby be better secured.

Trevithick himself does not seem to have erected another engine, but we gather from the evidence given by Mr. Rastrick in the committee on the Liverpool and Manchester Bill in 1825, that ten or twelve years before that time he had made an engine for Trevithick after his patent, and that the engine was exhibited in London. 66 A circular railroad was laid down," said Mr. Rastrick, and it was stated that this engine was to run against a horse, and that which went a sufficient number of miles was to win." It is not known what afterward became of this engine.

There were, however, at a much earlier period, several wealthy and enterprising men, both in Yorkshire and Northumberland, who were willing to give the locomotive a fair trial; and had Trevithick but possessed the requisite tenacity of purpose-had he not been too soon discouraged by partially successful experiments-he might have risen to both fame and fortune, not only as the inventor of the locomotive, but as the practical introducer of railway locomotion.

One of Trevithick's early friends and admirers was Mr. Blackett, of Wylam. The Wylam wagon-way is one of the oldest in the north of England. Down to the year 1807 it was formed of wooden spars or rails, laid down between the colliery at Wylam -where old Robert Stephenson worked-and the village of Lemington, some four miles down the Tyne, where the coals were loaded into keels or barges, and floated down past Newcastle, to be shipped for London. Each chaldron-wagon had a man in charge of it, and was originally drawn by one horse. The rate at which the wagons were hauled was so slow that only two journeys were performed by each man and horse in one day, and three on the day following. This primitive wagon-way passed, as before stated, close in front of the cottage in which George Stephenson was born, and one of the earliest sights which met his infant eyes was this wooden tram-road worked by horses.

placed on the Liverpool and Manchester line, a model of one was exhibited before the Academy. After it had been examined, a member of that learned body said, smiling, "Yes, this is all very ingenious, no doubt, but unfortunately the machine will never move. The wheels will turn round and round in the same place."

Mr. Blackett was the first colliery owner in the North who took an active interest in the locomotive. He had witnessed the first performances of Trevithick's steam-carriage in London, and was so taken with the idea of its application to railway locomotion that he resolved to have an engine erected after the new patent for use upon his tram-way at Wylam. He accordingly obtained from Trevithick, in October, 1804, a plan of his engine, provided with "friction-wheels," and employed Mr. John Whinfield, of Pipewellgate, Gateshead, to construct it at his foundery, there. The engine was made under the superintendence of one John Steele,* an ingenious mechanic, who had been in Wales, and worked under Trevithick in fitting the engine at Pen-ydarran. When the Gateshead locomotive was finished, a temporary way was laid down in the works, on which it was run backward and forward many times. For some reason or other, however-it is said because the engine was too light for drawing the coal-trains-it never left the works, but was dismounted from the wheels, and set to blow the cupola of the foundery, in which service it long continued to be employed.

Several years elapsed before Mr. Blackett took any farther steps to carry out his idea. The final abandonment of Trevithick's locomotive at Pen-y-darran perhaps contributed to deter him from proceeding farther; but he had the Wylam wooden tram-way taken up in 1808, and a plate-way of cast iron laid

* John Steele was one of the many "born mechanics" of the Northumberland district. When a boy at Colliery Dykes, his native place, he was noted for his "turn for machinery." He used to take his playfellows home to see and admire his imitations of pit-engines. While a mere youth he lost his leg by an accident; and those who remember him at Whinfield's speak of his hopping about the locomotive, of which he was very proud, upon his wooden leg. It was a great disappointment to him when Mr. Blackett refused to take the engine. One day he took a friend to look at it when reduced to its degraded office of blowing the cupola bellows; and, referring to the cause of its rejection, he observed that he was certain it would succeed, if made sufficiently heavy. "Our master," he continued, "will not be at the expense of following it up; but depend upon it the day will come when such an engine will be fairly tried, and then it will be found to answer." Steele was afterward extensively employed by the British government in raising sunken ships; and later in life he established engine-works at Rouen, where he made marine-engines for the French government. He was unfortunately killed by the explosion of an engineboiler (with the safety-valve of which something had gone wrong) when on an experimental trip with one of the steamers fitted up by himself, and on his way to England to visit his family near Newcastle.

CHAP. V.]

BLENKINSOP'S LEEDS ENGINE.

155

down instead a single line furnished with sidings to enable the laden wagons to pass the empty ones. The new iron road proved so much smoother than the old wooden one, that a single horse, instead of drawing one, was enabled to draw two, or even three laden wagons.

Although the locomotive seemed about to be lost sight of, it was not forgotten. In 1811, Mr. Blenkinsop, the manager of the Middleton Collieries, near Leeds, revived the idea of employing it in lieu of horses to haul the coals along his tram-way. Mr. Blenkinsop, in the patent which he took out for his proposed engine, followed in many respects the design of Trevithick; but, with the help of Matthew Murray, of Leeds, one of the most ingenious mechanics of his day, he introduced several important and valuable modifications. Thus he employed two cylinders of 8 in. diameter instead of one, as in Trevithick's engine. These cylinders were placed vertically, and immersed for more than half their length in the steam space of the boiler. The eduction

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pipes met in a single tube at the top, and threw the steam into the air. The boiler was cylindrical in form, but of cast iron. It had one flue, the fire being at one end and the chimney at the other. The engine was supported on a carriage without springs, resting directly upon two pairs of wheels and axles unconnected with the working parts, and which merely served to carry the engine upon the rails. The motion was effected in this way: the piston-rods, by means of cross-heads, worked the connectingrods, which came down to two cranks on each side below the boiler, placed at right angles in order to pass their centres with certainty. These cranks worked two shafts fixed across the engine, on which were small-toothed wheels working into a larger one between them; and on the axis of this large wheel, outside the framing, were the driving-wheels, one of which was toothed, and worked into a rack on one side of the railway.

It will be observed that the principal new features in this engine were the two cylinders and the toothed-wheel working into a rack-rail. Mr. Blenkinsop contrived the latter expedient in order to insure sufficient adhesion between the wheel and the road, supposing that smooth wheels and smooth rails would be insufficient for the purpose. Clumsy and slow though the engine was compared with modern locomotives, it was nevertheless a success. It was the first engine that plied regularly upon any railway, doing useful work; and it continued so employed for more than twenty years. What was more, it was a commercial success, for its employment was found to be economical compared with horsepower. In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, Mr. Blenkinsop stated that his engine weighed five tons; consumed two thirds of a hundred weight of coals and fifty gallons of water per hour; drew twenty-seven wagons, weighing ninety-four tons, on a dead level, at three and a half miles an hour, or fifteen tons up an ascent of 2 in. in the yard; that when "lightly loaded" it traveled at a speed of ten miles an hour; that it did the work of sixteen horses in twelve hours; and that its cost was £400. Such was Mr. Blenkinsop's own account of the performances of his engine, which was for a long time regarded as one of the wonders of the neighborhood.*

* Thomas Gray, a native of Leeds, was an enthusiastic believer in the new tractive power, and wherever he went he preached up railways and Blenkinsop's locomotive.

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