IX
STEPHENSON AND THE LOCOMOTIVE
1781-1848
The need of finding a new way of working the coal mines of England, and of marketing the coal, which had been such an important factor in the development of the steam-engine, was a scarcely less important factor in the building of the earliest practical railway locomotive. The coal had to be hauled from the pit of the colliery to the shipping place. It was carried in cars that were pushed or pulled over a rude line of wooden or iron rails. But it was evident from the time when James Watt began to build his steam-engines to lift the coal from the mine that men of inventive minds would soon seek to send the cars over the level ground by the same power. We owe the railroad chiefly to the needs of the north of England, and there we find the real birth of the locomotive.
About the beginning of the nineteenth century a number of men in England were experimenting with new means of locomotion, both for merchandise and for passengers. Their projects varied from cars running on wheels and drawn by horses to carriages propelled by small stationary steam-engines, placed at short distances from each other along the road. In 1802 Richard Trevethick, a captain in a Cornish tin-mine, took out a patent for a steam-carriage. The machine he built looked like an ordinary stage-coach on four wheels. It had one horizontal cylinder, which was placed in the rear of the hind axle, together with the boiler and the furnace-box. The motion of the piston was carried to a separate crank-axle, and that in turn gave the motion to the axle of the driving-wheel. This was in itself a great invention, being the first really successful high-pressure engine that was built on the principle of moving a piston by the elasticity of steam against only the pressure of the air. The steam was admitted from the boiler under the piston that moved in a cylinder, and forced it upward. When the motion had reached its limit, the communication between the piston and the under side of the cylinder was shut off, and the steam escaped into the atmosphere. Then a passage was opened between the boiler and the upper end of the piston, which was consequently pushed downward, and then the steam was again allowed to escape. As a result the power of the engine was equal to the difference between the atmosphere’s pressure and the elastic force of the steam in the boiler.
This steam-carriage of Trevethick was fairly successful, and created a great sensation in that part of Cornwall where it was built. He decided to take it to London, and drove it himself to Plymouth, from which port it was to be carried by sea. On the road it caused amazement and consternation, and won the name of Captain Trevethick’s dragon. He exhibited it in London, but after a short time gave up driving it, believing that the roads of England were too badly built to make the use of a steam-carriage feasible.
Other men were working on similar lines. Among them was the owner of a colliery in the north named Blackett, who built a number of engines for propelling coal-cars and used them at his mines. But these were very clumsy and heavy, moved slowly, and had to be continually repaired at considerable expense, so that other miners, after examining Blackett’s engines, decided they were not worth the cost of manufacture. To make the steam-carriage really serviceable it must be more efficient and reliable.
Meantime a young man named George Stephenson, who was working at a coal mine at Killingworth, seven miles north of Newcastle, was studying out a new plan of locomotive. His father had been a fireman in a colliery at Wylam, a village near Newcastle, and there the son George was born on June 9, 1781. He had lived the life of the other boys of the village, had been a herd-boy to care for a neighbor’s cows, had been a “picker” in the colliery, and separated stones and dross from the coal, had risen to assistant fireman, then fireman, then engineman. He was strong and vigorous, fond of outdoor sports, and also considerable of a student. In time he moved to Willington Quay, a village on the River Tyne, where coal was shipped to London. Here he married, and made his home in a small cottage near the quay. He was in charge of a fixed engine on Willington Ballast Hill that drew the trains of laden coal-cars up the incline.
After he had worked for three years at Willington he was induced to take the position of brakesman of the engine at the West Moor Colliery at Killingworth. He had only been settled in his new place a short time when his wife died, leaving him with a son Robert. Stephenson thenceforth threw himself into his work harder than ever, studying with his son as the boy grew older, and spending a great deal of time over his plans for a steam-engine that should move the coal-cars. He knew the needs of the colliery perfectly, had acquired a good knowledge of mechanics, and proposed to put his knowledge to account.