ENGINEERS AND THEIR TRIUMPHS.The Story of the Locomotive.CHAPTER I.
ENGINEERS AND THEIR TRIUMPHS.
The Story of the Locomotive.
FIRST STEPS.
“I thinkI could make a better engine than that.”
“Do you? Well, some’ing’s wanted; hauling coal by horses is very expensive.”
“Ay, it is, and I think an engine could do it better.”
“Mr. Blackett’s second engine burst all to pieces; d’ye mind that?”
“How came that about?”
“Tommy Waters, who put it together, could not make it go, so he got a bit fractious and said she should move. He did some’ing to the safety-valve and she did begin to work, but then she burst all to pieces.”
“Ay, ay, but this one is an improvement.”
“It had need be. Even the third was a perfect plague.”
“What! you mean Mr. Blackett’s third engine?”
“Ay. It used to draw eight or nine truck loads at about a mile an hour, or a little less; but it often got cranky and stood still.”
“Stood still!”
“Ay; we thought she would never stick to the road, so we had a cogged wheel to work into a rack-work rail laid along the track, and somehow she was always getting off the rack-rail.”
“And now you find that the engine is heavy enough herself to grip the rail.”
“Ay, that was Will Hedley’s notion; he’s a viewer at the colliery. And it is a great improvement. Why, that third engine, I say, was a perfect nuisance. Chaps used to sing out to the driver: ‘How do you get on?’”
“‘Get on,’ sez he, ‘I don’t get on; I on’y get off!’”
“It was always goin’ wrong, and horses was always having to be got out to drag it along.”
“How did Hedley find out that a rack-rail was not needful?”
“Well, he had a framework put upon wheels and worked by windlasses which were geared to the wheels. Men were put to work these windlasses which set the wheels going; and, lo and behold, she moved! The wheels, though smooth, kept to the rails, though they were smooth also, and the framework went along without slipping. ‘Crikey!’ says Hedley, ‘no cogged wheels, no chains, no legs for me! We can do without ’em all. Smooth wheels will grip smooth rails.’ And he proved it too by several experiments.”
“Then Mr. Blackett had this engine built?”
“Ay, and it be, as you say, a great improvement. But that steam blowing off there, after it have done its work, frights the horses on the Wylam Road ter’ble, and makes it a perfect nuisance.”
“Has nothing been done to alter it?”
“Mr. Blackett has given orders to stop the engine when any horses comes along, and the men don’t like that because it loses time. He thinks he is goingto let the steam escape gradual like, by blowing it off into a cask first.”
“Umph! very wasteful.”
“Oh, ay; it be wasteful; and many a one about here sez of Mr. Blackett that a fool and his money are soon parted.”
“No,” said the first speaker, shaking his head thoughtfully, “Mr. Blackett is no fool. But I think I could build a better engine than that.”
GEORGE STEPHENSON.
GEORGE STEPHENSON.
The tone in which these words were uttered was not boastful, but quiet and thoughtful.
“You are Geordie Stephenson, the engine-wright of the Killingworth Collieries, ’beant you?”
“Ay; and we have to haul coal some miles to the Tyne where it can be shipped. So you do away with all rack-work rails and all cogged wheels, do you?”
“Ay, ay, Geordie, that’s so—smooth wheels on smooth rails.”
This conversation, imaginary though to some extent it be, yet embodies some important facts. Jonathan Foster, Mr. Blackett’s engine-wright, informed Mr. Samuel Smiles, who mentions the circumstance in his “Lives of the Engineers,” that George Stephenson “declared his conviction that a much more effective engine might be made, that should work more steadily and draw the load more effectively.”
Geordie had studied the steam-engine most diligently. Born at Wylam—some eight miles distant from Newcastle, about thirty years previously—he had become a fireman of a steam-engine and had been wont to take it to pieces in his leisure. He was now thinking over the subject of building a locomotive engine, and he decided to see what had already been accomplished. He would profit by the failures and successes of others. So he went over to Wylam to see Mr. Blackett’s engines, and to Coxlodge Colliery to see Mr. Blenkinsop’s from Leeds; and here again it is said, that after watching the machine haul sixteen locomotive waggons at a speed of about three miles an hour, he expressed the opinion that “he thought he could make a better engine than that, to go upon legs.”
A man named Brunton did actually take out a patent in 1813 for doing this. The legs were to work alternately, like a living creature’s. The idea which seems to have troubled the early inventors of the locomotive, was that smooth wheels would not grip smooth rails to haul along a load. And it was Blenkinsop of Leeds who took out a patent in 1811 for a rack-work rail into which a cog-wheel from his engine should work.
Thus William Hedley’s idea of trusting to the weight of the engine to grip the rails, and abolishing all the toothed wheels and legs and rack-work for this purpose on a fairly level rail, was the first great step toward making the locomotive a practicable success.
“PUFFING BILLY,” THE OLDEST LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE IN EXISTENCE.(At present in South Kensington Museum.)
“PUFFING BILLY,” THE OLDEST LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE IN EXISTENCE.(At present in South Kensington Museum.)
The idea that Stephenson invented the locomotive is a mistake. But just as James Watt improved the crude steam pumps and engines he found in existence, so George Stephenson of immortal memory developed and made practicable the locomotive. For, in spite of Hedley’s discovery or invention, all locomotives were partial failures until Stephenson took the matter in hand.
Nevertheless, William Hedley’s “Puffing Billy” must be regarded as one of the first practicable railway engines ever built. It is still to be seen in the South Kensington Museum, London. Patented in 1813, it began regular work at Wylam in that year, and continued in use until 1872. It was probably this engine which Stephenson saw when he said to Jonathan Foster that he could make a better, and it was no doubt the first to work by smooth wheels on smooth rails. Altogether it has been looked upon as the “father” of the enormous number of locomotives which have followed.
Mr. Blackett was a friend of Richard Trevithick; and among the various inventors and improvers of the locomotive engine Richard Trevithick, a tin-miner in Cornwall, must have a high place.
Trevithick was a pupil of Murdock, who was assistant of James Watt. Murdock had made a model successfully of a locomotive engine at Redruth. Others also had attempted the same thing. Savery had suggested something of the kind; Cugnot, a French engineer, built one in Paris about 1763; Oliver Evans, an American, made a steam carriage in 1772; William Symington, who did so much for the steamboat, constructed a model of one in 1784. So that many minds had been at work on the problem.
But Richard Trevithick was really the first Englishman who used a steam-engine on a railway. He had not much money and he persuaded his cousin, Andrew Vivian, to join him in the enterprise. In 1802 they took out a patent for a steam-engine to propel carriages.
But before this he had made a locomotive to travel along roads, and on Christmas Eve, 1801, the wonderful sight could have been seen of this machine carrying passengers for the first time. It is indeed believed to have been the first occasion on which passengers were conveyed by the agency of steam—the pioneer indeed of a mighty traffic.
The machine was taken to London and exhibited in certain streets, and at length, in 1808, it was shown on ground where now, curiously enough, the Euston Station of the London and North-Western Railway stands. Did any prevision of the extraordinary success of the locomotive flash across the engineer’s brain? Before the infant century had run its course what wonderful developments of the strange new machine were to be seen on that very spot!
Much interest was aroused by the exhibition of this machine, and Sir Humphrey Davy, a fellow Cornishman, is reported to have written to a friend—“I shall soon hope to hear that the roads of England are the haunts of Captain Trevithick’s dragons—a characteristic name.”
His letter tends to show that the idea then was that the engine should run on the public roads, and not on a specially prepared track like a railway. Had not this idea been modified, and the principle of a railroad adopted, it is hardly too much to say that the extraordinary development of the locomotive would not have followed.
Trevithick’s first engine appears to have burst. At all events, in the year 1803 or 1804, he built, and began to run, a locomotive on a horse tramway in South Wales. It appears that he had been employed to build a forge-engine here, and thus the opportunity was presented for the trial of a machine to haul along minerals. This, it is believed, was the first railway locomotive, and its builder was Richard Trevithick.
The trial, however, was not very successful. Trevithick’s engine was too heavy for the tramway on whichit ran, and the proprietors were not prepared to put down a stronger road. Furthermore, it once alarmed the good folk, unused then to railway accidents, by actually running off its rail, though only travelling at about four or five miles an hour. It had to be ignominiously brought home by horses. That settled the matter. It became a pumping engine, and as such answered very well.
In this locomotive, however, it should be noted Trevithick employed a device which, a quarter of a century later, Stephenson made so valuable that we might call it the very life-blood of the Locomotive. We mean the device of turning the waste steam into the funnel (after it has done its work by driving the piston), and thus forcing a furnace draught and increasing the fire. Stephenson, however, sent the steam through a small nozzled pipe which made of it a veritable steam-blast, while Trevithick, apparently, simply discharged the steam into the chimney.
Disgusted it would seem by the failure, the inventor turned his attention to other things. Trevithick appears to have lingered on the very brink of success, and then turned aside. Another effort and he might have burst the barrier. But it was not to be; though if any one man deserve the title, Inventor of the Locomotive, that man is the Cornish genius Trevithick. Readers who may desire fuller information of Trevithick and his inventions will find it in his “Life” by Francis Trevithick, C.E., published in 1872.
It must be borne in mind that Stephenson found the imaginary hindrance that smooth wheels would not grip smooth rails, cleared away for him by Hedley’s experiment, whereas Trevithick had to contend against this difficulty. He strove to conquer it by roughing the circumference of his wheels by projecting bolts, so that they might grip in that way. That is, his patent provided for it, if he did not actually carry out the plan.
It is very significant that this imaginary fear shouldhave hindered the development of the locomotive. The idea seems to have prevailed that, no matter how powerful the engine, it could not haul along very heavy loads unless special provision were made for its “bite” or grip of the rails. Another difficulty with which Trevithick had to contend was one of cost. It is said that one of his experiments failed in London for that reason. This was apparently the locomotive for roads, as distinct from the locomotive for rails. A machine may be an academic triumph, but the question of cost must be met if the machine is to become a commercial and industrial success.
Mr. Blenkinsop of Leeds then took out his patent in 1811 for a rack-work rail and cogged wheel; but before this Mr. Blackett of Wylam had obtained a plan of Trevithick’s engine and had one constructed. He had met Trevithick at London, and it was as early as 1804 that he obtained the plan. The engines, therefore, of Mr. Blackett which Stephenson saw, came, so to speak, in direct line from Trevithick, except that Mr. Blackett’s second engine was a combination of Blenkinsop’s and Trevithick’s.
Some progress was made, but when on that memorable day George Stephenson, the engine-wright of Killingworth, said, “I think I could build a better engine than that,” no very effective or economical working locomotive was in existence.
Back therefore went George Stephenson to his home. He had seen what others had done, and with his knowledge of machinery and his love for engine work he would now try what he could do.
Would he succeed?