FIG. 97.—GEORGE STEPHENSON’S “ROCKET,” 1829.
In 1829 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was completed, and the directors offered a prize of £500 for the best locomotive. George Stephenson’s “Rocket,” shown in [Fig. 97], attained a speed of 241⁄6 miles an hour, and took the prize. Its success, however, was marred by the first railroad fatality, for it ran over and killed a man on this occasion. It embodied, as leading features, the steam blast and the multitubular boiler, which latter was six feet long and had twenty-five three-inch tubes. The fire box was surrounded by an exterior casing that formed a water jacket, which, by means of pipes, was in open communication with the water space of the boiler.
FIG. 98.—“STOURBRIDGE LION,” 1829.
The first practical locomotive to run on a railroad in the United States was the “Stourbridge Lion,” seen in [Fig. 98]. This was imported from England, and arrived in New York in May, 1829, and was tried in that year on a section of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company’s railroad. The boiler was tubular, and the exhaust steam was carried into the chimney by a pipe in front of the smoke stack as shown. It had vertical cylinders of thirty-six inch stroke, with overhead grasshopper beams and connecting rods.
