When finished, it was conveyed to Wylam on a wagon, and there mounted upon a wooden frame, supported by four pairs of wheels, which had been constructed for its reception. A barrel of water, placed on another frame upon wheels, was attached to it as a tender. After a great deal of labor, the cumbrous machine was got upon the road. At first it would not move an inch. Its maker, Tommy Waters, became impatient, and at length enraged, and, taking hold of the lever of the safety-valve, declared in his desperation that "either she or he should go." At length the machinery was set in motion, on which, as Jonathan Foster described to the author, "she flew all to pieces, and it was the biggest wonder i' the world that we were not all blewn up." The incompetent and useless engine was declared to be a failure; it was shortly after dismounted and sold; and Mr. Blackett's praiseworthy efforts thus far proved in vain.
He was still, however, desirous of testing the practicability of employing locomotive power in working the coal down to Lemington, and he determined on making yet another trial. He accordingly directed his engine-wright, Jonathan Foster, to proceed with the building of a third engine in the Wylam workshops. This new locomotive had a single 8-inch cylinder, was provided with a fly-wheel like its predecessor, and the driving-wheel was cogged on one side to enable it to travel in the rack-rail laid along the road. The engine proved more successful than the former one, and it was found capable of dragging eight or nine loaded wagons, though at the rate of little more than a mile an hour, from the colliery to the shipping-place. It sometimes took six hours to perform the journey of five miles. Its weight was found too great for the road, and the cast-iron plates were constantly breaking. It was also very apt to get off the rack-rail, and then it stood still. The driver was one day asked how he got on. "Get on?" said he, "we don't get on; we only get off!" On such occasions, horses had to be sent out to drag the wagons as before, and others to haul the engine back to the workshops. It was constantly getting out of order; its plugs, pumps, or cranks got wrong, and it was under repair as often as at work. At length it became so cranky that the horses were usually sent after it to drag it along when it gave up, and the workmen generally declared it to be a "perfect plague." Mr. Blackett did not obtain credit among his neighbors for these experiments. Many laughed at his machines, regarding them only in the light of crotchets—frequently quoting the proverb of "a fool and his money are soon parted." Others regarded them as absurd innovations on the established method of hauling coal, and pronounced that they would "never answer."
Notwithstanding, however, the comparative failure of the second locomotive, Mr. Blackett persevered with his experiments. He was zealously assisted by Jonathan Foster, the engine-wright, and William Hedley, the viewer of the colliery, a highly ingenious person, who proved of great use in carrying out the experiments to a successful issue. One of the chief causes of failure being the rack-rail, the idea occurred to Mr. Hedley that it might be possible to secure sufficient adhesion between the wheel and the rail by the mere weight of the engine, and he proceeded to make a series of experiments for the purpose of determining this problem. He had a frame placed on four wheels, and fitted up with windlasses attached by gearing to the several wheels. The frame having been properly weighted, six men were set to work the windlasses, when it was found that the adhesion of the smooth wheels on the smooth rails was quite sufficient to enable them to propel the machine without slipping. Having then found the proportion which the power bore to the weight, he demonstrated by successive experiments that the weight of the engine would of itself produce sufficient adhesion to enable it to draw upon a smooth railroad the requisite number of wagons in all kinds of weather. And thus was the fallacy which had heretofore prevailed on this subject completely exploded, and it was satisfactorily proved that rack-rails, toothed wheels, endless chains, and legs, were alike unnecessary for the efficient traction of loaded wagons upon a moderately level road.[35]
From this time forward, considerably less difficulty was experienced in working the coal-trains upon the Wylam tram-road. At length the rack-rail was dispensed with. The road was laid with heavier rails; the working of the old engine was improved; and a new engine was shortly after built and placed upon the road, still on eight wheels, driven by seven rack-wheels working inside them—with a wrought-iron boiler through which the flue was returned so as largely to increase the heating surface, and thus give increased power to the engine.[36] Below is a representation of this improved Wylam engine.
WYLAM ENGINE.
As may readily be imagined, the jets of steam from the piston, blowing off into the air at high pressure while the engine was in motion, caused considerable annoyance to horses passing along the Wylam road, at that time a public highway. The nuisance was felt to be almost intolerable, and a neighboring gentleman threatened to have it put down. To diminish the noise as much as possible, Mr. Blackett gave orders that so soon as any horse, or vehicle drawn by horses, came in sight, the locomotive was to be stopped, and the frightful blast of the engine thus suspended until the passing animals had got out of sight. Much interruption was thus caused to the working of the railway, and it excited considerable dissatisfaction among the workmen. The following plan was adopted to abate the nuisance: a reservoir was provided immediately behind the chimney (as shown in the opposite cut) into which the waste steam was thrown after it had performed its office in the cylinder, and from this reservoir the steam gradually escaped into the atmosphere without noise. This arrangement was devised with the express object of preventing a blast in the chimney, the value of which, as we shall subsequently find, was not detected until George Stephenson, adopting it with a preconceived design and purpose, demonstrated its importance and value—as being, in fact, the very life-breath of the locomotive engine.
While Mr. Blackett was thus experimenting and building locomotives at Wylam, George Stephenson was anxiously studying the same subject at Killingworth. He was no sooner appointed engine-wright of the collieries than his attention was directed to the means of more economically hauling the coal from the pits to the river side. We have seen that one of the first important improvements which he made, after being placed in charge of the colliery machinery, was to apply the surplus power of a pumping steam-engine fixed underground, for the purpose of drawing the coals out of the deeper workings of the Killingworth mines, by which he succeeded in effecting a large reduction in the expenditure on manual and horse labor.
The coals, when brought above ground, had next to be laboriously dragged by means of horses to the shipping staiths on the Tyne, several miles distant. The adoption of a tram-road, it is true, had tended to facilitate their transit; nevertheless, the haulage was both tedious and expensive. With the view of economizing labor, Stephenson laid down inclined planes where the nature of the ground would admit of this expedient being adopted. Thus a train of full wagons let down the incline by means of a rope running over wheels laid along the tram-road, the other end of which was attached to a train of empty wagons placed at the bottom of the parallel road on the same incline, dragged them up by the simple power of gravity. But this applied only to a comparatively small part of the road. An economical method of working the coal-trains, instead of by means of horses—the keep of which was at that time very costly, in consequence of the high price of corn—was still a great desideratum, and the best practical minds in the collieries were actively engaged in trying to solve the problem.
In the first place, Stephenson resolved to make himself thoroughly acquainted with what had already been done. Mr. Blackett's engines were working daily at Wylam, past the cottage where he had been born, and thither he frequently went[37] to inspect the improvements made by Mr. Blackett from time to time both in the locomotive and in the plate-way along which it worked. Jonathan Foster informed us that, after one of these visits, Stephenson declared to him his conviction that a much more effective engine might be made, that should work more steadily and draw the load more effectively.