The Story of the Locomotive

Part One

Who, with the slightest particle of sensibility in his soul, can contemplate without emotion that wonderful triumph of human genius, the locomotive, that, so-called, "Iron Horse," as, harnessed for his task, he comes strutting and snorting up from his smoky stable, with his sinews of steel, and his fiery breath, and takes his place upon the track preparatory to running his race!

The invention of the locomotive, and particularly the application of the locomotive engine to the purposes of rapid steam travelling on railroads, by revolutionizing entirely the internal communications of the civilized world, has been productive of the greatest and most rapid advance in the social condition of mankind effected since the earliest dawn of civilization. To indicate the successive steps by which this wonderful instrumentality was finally perfected and successfully introduced – to trace the locomotive from its first and feeblest beginning through its several stages of development, until we find it recognized as one of the most vigorous and untiring workers in the entire world of industry; and withal, indirectly, to describe the origin and gradual but steady progress, and to show by what moral and material agencies the founders of a system of railways that, beginning with the primitive Liverpool and Manchester Line, has spread its iron net-work over Europe and America, and bids fair erelong to belt the globe, were enabled to carry their ideas into effect, and to work out results no less beneficent than, astonishing, is the manifestly grateful task which the author of this noble volume, Mr. Samuel Smiles, has happily proposed to himself and which he has most satisfactorily accomplished.

The easy and rapid transit of persons and commodities from place to place has, in all countries, from the earliest times, particularly in proportion to the advance made in civilization, been an object of earnest desire. Who, in his childhood's days, has not envied the marvellous gift of speed conferred by Fortunatus's wishing cap? Such a gift, it was felt, must confer rare pleasure. "Life has not many things better than this," said Samuel Johnson, as be rolled rapidly along in his post-chaise. But what is of vastly greater import than the mere pleasure connected with easy and rapid travelling are the prodigious energies, material, moral, and social, hereby developed.

The principal obstruction to the progress of society, in all ages and countries, has been occasioned by defective internal communications. These obstructions, in this country and Europe, were at first, to a considerable extent, removed by the adoption of the canal system, and the improvement, at public expense, of the high-roads. But the progress of industry was so rapid, and the productive wealth of the more civilized nations consequently was becoming so greatly increased, that, however numerous and excellent, it soon became apparent that our canals and public-roads were altogether inadequate for the accommodation of the ordinary traffic and the travel.

Accordingly, it is not surprising that inventive minds should, from a comparatively early date, have been on the alert, and applying themselves, in all conceivable ways, to the solution of the problem of how our public communications were heat to be improved. Down to the end of the last century, and even much later, the only power used in haulage was that of the horse. "Along the common roads of the country," says our author, "the poor horses were tearing their hearts out, in dragging behind them cumbersome vehicles, and, at a very slow, expensive, and unsatisfactory rate, transporting merchandise and travellers from one community to another."

One of the first expedients proposed for getting rid of the horse, strange to say, was the power of wind. It impelled ships by sea; why not also carriages by land ? Toward the end of the sixteenth century, one Simon Stevins, a Fleming, invented a sailing coach-the first of which we have any account, It proved to be of no practical service.

The employment of steam power as a means of land locomotion was the subject of much curious speculation long before any practical attempt was made to carry it into effect. The merit of promulgating the first idea with reference to it, though it is not known that he ever made any experiment of his proposed method of locomotion, probably belongs to no other than the great Sir Isaac Newton. Among the first who were engaged in correspondence relative to this matter we find Benjamin Franklin, then agent in London for the "United Provinces of America." One Erasmus Darwin, a medical practitioner, and a gentleman gifted with a very sanguine and speculative mind, projected some very bold and original schemes for realizing his favourite idea of a "fiery chariot." Richard Lovell Edgeworth, an enthusiastic pupil of the latter, was the first to suggest and to advocate the drawing of freight and stage coaches on railroads by means of stationary engines, James I Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine itself, at one time turned his attention to the application of steam power to the driving of wheel-carriages on common roads. But the model which he constructed not answering his expectations, and being very much occupied with his business, he laid his project aside, and does not appear to have resumed it again, at least not for many years.

The first self-moving road-engine, moved by steam power, of which we have any account, was invented by an ingenious French mechanic named Cugnot. It ran on three wheels, and was put in motion by an engine composed of two single-acting cylinders, the pistons of which acted alternately on the single front wheel. On being first set in motion, Cugnot's steam-carriage ran directly against a stone wall, and with such violence as to knock it down. There was thus no doubt about the power, though there were many doubts about the manageableness and practical efficiency of this novel machine. The experiment, meantime, was looked upon with great interest, and was generally admitted to be of a very remarkable character; and though nothing thereafter ever came of it, yet considering that this was a first attempt, it was by no means regarded as altogether a failure.

The first man in England who ever successfully applied steam power to driving vehicles of any kind was William Murdock, A. D. 1784. This most skilled and ingenious workman had been in the habit of occupying himself during his leisure hours in constructing a model locomotive after a design of his own. The plan he pursued was very simple, yet efficient. His model was of small dimensions, standing little more than a foot high, and yet sufficiently high to demonstrate the soundness of the principle on which it was constructed. It was supported on three wheels, and carried a small copper boiler, heated by a spirit-lamp. The cylinder, of three-fourths inches diameter and two inches stroke, was fixed perpendicularly in the top of the boiler, the piston-rod being connected with the vibrating beam attached to the connecting rod which worked the crank of the driving wheel. The first experiment made with it was made in Murdock's own house, when it successfully hauled a model wagon around the room. Another experiment was made out of doors, on which occasion, small though the engine was, it fairly outran the speed of the inventor. It seems that one night, after returning from his day labours, he determined to try the working of his model locomotive. For this purpose he had recourse to the walk leading to the church, about a mile from the town. It was rather narrow, and was bounded on each side by high hedges. The night was dark. Having lit his lamp, the water soon boiled, when off dashed the little engine, and the inventor in pursuit at full speed. Shortly after he heard distant shouts of terror. It was too dark to perceive objects; but he found, on following up his runaway machine, that the cries proceeded from the worthy pastor of the parish, who, going toward the town, was met on this lonely road by the hissing and fiery little monster, which he subsequently declared he had taken to be the Evil One himself.

Notwithstanding this signal and very notable triumph, Murdock seems to have dropped all further experiment in this direction-leaving it to others to work out the great problem of the working locomotive engine. But, though he refrained from embodying his ideas in any more complete, working form, he long continued to speculate about road locomotion, and was fully persuaded of its entire practicability.

The name of William Symington is well known m connection with early steam locomotion. Of an ingenious turn of mind from childhood, he seems, at an early period, to have conceived the idea of employing the steam-engine to drive wheel-carriages. At the age of twenty-three he, in conjunction with his father, succeeded in completing a working model of the road locomotive. The machine consisted of a carriage and a locomotive behind, supported by four wheels. The engine was partly condensing and partly atmospheric. The arrangement was ingenious, and yet it was but too evident the traction by means of such an engine could be of only the very slowest kind.

While the inventive minds of England were thus occupied, those of America were by no means altogether idle. The idea of applying steam power to the propulsion of steam-carriages on land is said to have occurred to John Fitch, in 1785; but he was soon diverted from it by his scheme of applying the same power to the propulsion of vessels on the water. About the same time Oliver Evans, a native of Newport, Delaware, was occupied with this same project. His friends, however, considering his enterprise chimerical and impracticable, refused, for some time, to furnish him with the means necessary to enable him to proceed. Beginning in 1800 a steam-carriage at his own expense, he had not proceeded far with it when, altering his intention, he applied his engine, intended for the driving of a carriage, to the driving of a small grinding-mill. In 1804, however, he constructed at Philadelphia a second engine of five horse power, and working on the high-pressure principle, which was placed on a large skow, mounted on wheels. This uncouth and cumbrous vehicle was actually propelled by steam up Market-street, and around the circle of the water-works, and then finally launched into the Schuylkill. It does not appear that any further trial was made of this engine as a locomotive. Like its predecessor, it was, shortly after, consigned to the ignominious service of driving a grist-mill, where, doubtless, its previous employment and career as a travelling-engine was soon forgotten.

The subject of road locomotion was again brought into prominent notice in England by an important practical experiment, conducted in a remote corner of the kingdom by a young man, then obscure, but afterward famous, and who, if any single individual be entitled to that appellation, may be fairly regarded as the inventor of the railroad locomotive. This was Richard Trevithick, a person of extraordinary mechanical genius, but of marvellous ill-fortune; the inventor of many ingenious contrivances, and the founder of the fortunes of others, and yet dying at last in extreme poverty and cold neglect, leaving behind him only his truly wonderful inventions and the recollections of his marvellously prolific genius. At one time a pupil of William Murdock, it is highly probable that he got his idea of the high-pressure road locomotive from Murdock's ingenious little model already described. An engineer by trade, he had for a long time entertained the idea of making the expansive power of steam act directly on both sides of the piston on the high-pressure principle, and applying the same to the driving of carriages on common roads. This idea was not original with Trevithick; but he was the first to embody it in any thing like a practical working machine. Trevithick's steam-carriage was the most compact and handsome vehicle of the kind that had yet been invented, and, indeed, as it regards arrangement, it has scarcely to this day been surpassed. It consisted of a carriage capable of accommodating some half a dozen passengers; underneath which was the engine and machinery; the whole being supported on four wheels-two in front, by which it was guided, and two behind, by which it was driven. This steam-carriage, after several successful trials upon the public roads adjoining his own town, he determined to take to London and exhibit there, as the most recent novelty in steam mechanism. It was successfully run from Cambowern to Plymouth, a distance of about ninety miles, whence it was shipped to London, where, arriving in safety, it naturally excited a great deal of curiosity. It was run on a certain piece of waste ground, where such scientific celebrities as Sir Humphrey Davy and Mr. Davies Gilbert inspected the machine and rode upon it. Several of them took the steering of the carriage by turns, and they expressed their satisfaction with the mechanism both by which it was propelled and directed. The steam-carriage shortly became the talk of the town, and the public curiosity being on the increase, Trevithick resolved to "make a little spec," by inclosing his machine and admitting persons to see it at so much a head. On the first day a large number of persons were admitted to witness the exhibition. On the second day a similar crowd assembled for the same purpose, but in consequence of some unaccountable freak of temper on the part of the eccentric inventor the place was closed and the engine removed.

On the 21st of February, 1804, Trevithick finished and tried on what was called the Merthyr tram-road, in Wales, the first railway locomotive ever constructed. On its first trial this engine drew for a distance of nine miles ten tons of bar iron, at the rate of five and a half miles an hour. The weight of this machine was such, however, that it broke up the tramplates very badly, and was often getting entirely off the track. The result was, it soon ceased to be employed as a locomotive. So far as the locomotive itself was concerned, it was manifestly a remarkable success. The defect lay not so much in the engine as in the road. Formed of plate-rails of cast-iron, and of a very weak form, though sufficient to bear up the loaded wagons as ordinarily drawn along them by horses, they were found quite insufficient to bear the weight of Trevithick's engine. To relay the road of sufficient strength would have involved a heavy outlay, which the owners, not yet perceiving the advantage in an economical point of view in employing engine in lieu of horse-power, were not yet naturally willing to incur. The locomotive was accordingly taken off the road, and the experiment, successful though it had been, was brought to an end. Trevithick had, in the mean time, in a great measure solved the problem of steam-locomotion on railways. He had produced a compact engine, working on the high-pressure principle, capable of carrying wood and water sufficient for a journey of considerable length, and of drawing loaded wagons at five and a half miles an hour. He had shown by his smooth-wheeled locomotive that the weight of the engine had given sufficient adhesion for the haulage of the load; and, finally, though he was not aware of the value of the arrangement, he discharged his escape-steam Into the chimney. Here were all the essential elements of the problem completely mastered. But this laborious pioneer was lacking in those great heroic qualities – the infinite patience, the unconquerable perseverance, the unyielding tenacity of purpose-the power of fighting an up-hill battle, absolutely necessary in order to consummate an undertaking of this character. We hear no more of Trevithick in connection with the story of the locomotive. The failure of the road on which his trial engine travelled so provoked or discouraged him that he seems at once to have abandoned his cherished enterprise in disgust.

In 1811 a Mr. Blenkinsop, the manager of the Middleton collieries, near Leeds, had revived the idea of employing the locomotive instead of horses to haul the coals along his tram-way, and following, in many respects, the design of Trevithick, had invented a machine which, though clumsy and slow compared with modern locomotives, was, nevertheless, the first engine that plied regularly on any railway doing useful work. The principal new features of this engine were two cylinders and a toothed drive wheel working in a rack-rail. Notwithstanding the successful experiment of Trevithick just described, the public were yet very lath to believe that the "grip" or "bite" of the smooth wheels of the engine would suffice for drawing heavy weights. This machine of Mr. Blenkinsop actually continued to be employed on his tram-way for upward of twenty years.

A Mr. Blackett, however, was the first considerable colliery owner who took an active interest in the locomotive. The zeal and perseverance with which this man surmounted obstacles, disregarded failure, followed up one experiment with another until he finally achieved a measure of success, are calculated to excite the highest admiration. He had witnessed the first performance of Trevithick's steam-carriage in London, and was so taken with the idea of its application to railway locomotion that lie resolved to have an engine erected after the new patent for use upon his Wylam tram-way. After several ineffectual attempts, in which this resolute pioneer had to encounter not only untold natural difficulties, but, what in some respects was worse, the ridicule of his friends, he at length succeeded in carrying his experiments, in 1812, to a comparatively successful issue.

In the mean time, while Mr. Blackett was thus experimenting and building locomotives at Wylam, this same subject was also occupying the diligent and thoughtful consideration of a certain obscure, unlettered, but enterprising and ingenious engine-wright at Killingworth; of one who was yet destined to do for the locomotive what James Watt had done for the condensing-engine – to render what be had found clumsy and inefficient powerful, efficient, and useful; to devise and perfect all that is admirable in the structure, or vast in the utility of an instrumentality that, by virtue of the influence it is now daily exercising on the civilization of the world, must be esteemed certainly of the most commanding importance.