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.

He had already, as engine-wright of the Killingworth Colliery, applied the surplus power of a pumping steam-engine to the work of drawing coal from the deeper workings of the mine, thereby saving a great amount of manual and horse labor. When the coal was drawn up it had to be transported to the quays along the Tyne, and to simplify this Stephenson laid down inclined planes so that a train of full wagons moving down the incline was able to draw up another train of empty wagons. But this would only work over a short distance, and was in itself a small saving in effort.

The engines that Mr. Blackett had built, using Trevethick’s model as a basis, were working daily near the Killingworth Colliery, and Stephenson frequently went over to see them. He studied Mr. Blackett’s latest locomotive, nicknamed “Black Billy,” with the greatest care, and then told his friend Jonathan Foster that he was convinced that he could build a better engine than Trevethick’s, one that would work more effectively and cheaply and draw a train of cars more steadily.

He also had the advantage of seeing other primitive locomotives that were being tried at different places near Newcastle. One of these, known as Blenkinsop’s Leeds engine, ran on a tramway, and would draw sixteen wagons with a weight of seventy tons at the rate of about three miles an hour. But the Blenkinsop engine was found to be very unsteady, and tore up the tram-rails, and when its boiler blew up the owner decided that the engine was not worth the cost of repair. Stephenson, however, drew some useful points from it, as well as from each of the other models he saw, and proposed to himself to follow Watt’s example in constructing his steam-engine, namely, to combine the plans and discoveries of other inventors in a machine of his own, and so achieve a more complete success.

Stephenson was now very well regarded at the colliery for the improvements he had made there. He brought the matter of building a new “Traveling Engine,” as he called it, to the attention of the lessees of the mine in 1813. Lord Ravensworth, the principal partner, formed a favorable opinion of Stephenson’s plans, and agreed to supply him with the funds necessary to build a locomotive.

With his support Stephenson went to work to choose his tools and workmen. He had to devise and make many of the tools he needed, and to train his men specially for this business. He built his first engine in the workshops at the West Moor Mine. It followed to some extent the model of Blenkinsop’s engine. It had a cylindrical boiler, eight feet long and thirty-four inches in diameter, with an internal flue tube passing through it. The engine had two vertical cylinders and worked the propelling gear with cross-heads and connecting-rods. The power of the two cylinders was carried by means of spur-wheels, which continued the motive power to the wheels that supported the engine on the rails. The engine was simply mounted on a wooden frame that was supported on four wheels. These wheels were smooth, as Stephenson was convinced that smooth wheels would run properly on an edge-rail.

This engine, christened the “Blutcher,” and taking about ten months to build, was tried on the Killingworth Railway on July 25, 1814. It proved to be the most successful working engine that had yet been built, and would pull eight loaded wagons of about thirty tons’ weight up a slight grade at the rate of four miles an hour. For some time it was used daily at the colliery.

But the “Blutcher” was after all a very clumsy machine. The engine had no springs, and its movement was a series of jolts, that injured the rails and shook the machinery apart. The important parts of the machinery were huddled together, and caused friction, and the cog-wheels soon became badly worn. Moreover the engine moved scarcely faster than a horse’s walk, and the expense of running it was very little less than the cost of horse-power. Stephenson saw that he must in some way increase the power of his engine if he was to provide a new motive power for the mines.

In this first engine the steam had been allowed to escape into the air with a loud, hissing noise, which frightened horses and cattle, and was generally regarded as a nuisance. Stephenson thought that if he could carry this steam, after it had done its work in the cylinders, into the chimney by means of a small pipe, and allow it to escape in a vertical direction, its velocity would be added to the smoke from the fire, or the rising current of air in the chimney, and would in that way increase the draught, and as a result the intensity of combustion in the furnace. He tried this experiment, and found his conjecture correct; the blast stimulated combustion, consequently the capability of the boiler to generate steam was greatly increased, and the power of the engine increased in the same proportion. No extra weight was added to the machine. The invention of this steam blast was almost the turning point in the history of the locomotive. Without it the engine would have been too clumsy and slow for practical use, but with it the greatest possibilities of use appeared.

Encouraged by the success of his steam blast Stephenson started to build a second locomotive. In this he planned an entire change in mechanical construction, his principal objects being the use of as few parts as possible, and the most direct possible application of power to the wheels. He took out a patent for this engine on February 28, 1815. This locomotive had two vertical cylinders that communicated directly with each pair of the four wheels that supported the engine, by means of a cross-head and a pair of connecting-rods. “Ball and socket” joints were used to make the union between the ends of the cross-heads where they united with the connecting-rods, and between the rods and the crank-pins attached to each driving-wheel. The mechanical skill of his workmen was not equal to the forging of all the necessary parts as Stephenson had devised them, and he was obliged to make use of substitutes which did not always work smoothly, but he finally succeeded in completing a locomotive which was a vast improvement on all earlier ones, and that was notable for the simple and direct communication between the cylinders and the wheels, and the added power gained by using the waste steam in the steam blast. This second locomotive of Stephenson’s was in the main the model for all those built for a considerable time.

During the time when Stephenson was working on his second locomotive explosions of fire-damp were unusually frequent in the coal mines of Northumberland and Durham, and for a space he turned his attention to the possibility of inventing some pattern of safety-lamp. The result was his perfection of a lamp that would furnish the miners with sufficient light and yet preclude risk of exploding fire-damp. This came to be known as the “Geordie Lamp,” to distinguish it from the “Davy Lamp” that Sir Humphrey Davy was inventing at about the same time. The lamp was used successfully by the miners at Killingworth, and was considered by many as superior to Davy’s lamp. Disputes arose as to which was invented first, and long controversies between scientific societies, most of which sided with the friends of Davy. Stephenson himself stated his claims firmly, but without rancor, and when he saw that it prevented the accidents in mines was satisfied that he had gained his object, and returned to the more absorbing subject of locomotives.

He realized that the road and the rails were almost as important as the engine itself. At that time the railways were laid in the most careless fashion, little attention was paid to the rails’ proper joining, and less to the grades of the roads. Stephenson laid down new rails at Killingworth with “half-lap joints,” or extending over each other for a certain distance at the ends, instead of the “butt joints” that were formerly used. Over these both the coal-cars drawn by horses and his locomotive ran much more smoothly. To increase this smoothness of travel he added a system of spring carriage to his engine, and saved it from the jolting that had handicapped his first model.

The second locomotive was proving so efficient at the Killingworth Colliery that friends of the inventor urged him to look into the possible use of steam in traveling on the common roads. To study this he made an instrument called the dynamometer, which enabled him to calculate the resistance of friction to which carriages would be exposed on railways. His experiments made him doubtful of the possibility of running such railroads, unless a great amount of very expensive tunneling and grading were first done.

All this time George Stephenson continued to study with his son Robert. The boy was employed at the colliery, and was rapidly learning the business under the skilful charge of his father. Stephenson had decided however that Robert should have a better education than had been his, and in 1820 took him from his post as viewer in the West Moor Pit, and sent him to the University of Edinburgh.

News spread slowly in England in that day, and the fact that a steam locomotive was being successfully used at Killingworth attracted very little attention in the rest of the country. Even in the neighborhood of the mines people soon grew used to seeing “Puffing Billy,” as the engine was called, traveling back and forth from the pit to the quay, and took it quite for granted. Here and there scattered scientific men, ever since Watt’s perfection of the steam-engine, had considered the possibility of travel by steam, but practical business men had failed to come forward to build a railway line. At length, however, Edward Pease, of Darlington, planned a road to run from Stockton to Darlington, and set about building it. He had a great deal of difficulty in forming a company to finance it, but he was a man of much perseverance, and at length he succeeded. While he was doing this Stephenson was patiently building new locomotives, and trying to induce the mine-owners along the Tyne to replace their horse-cars with his engines. In 1819 the owners of the Hetton Colliery decided to make this change, and asked Stephenson to take charge of the construction of their line. He obtained the consent of the Killingworth owners, and began work. On November 18, 1822, the Hetton Railway was opened. Its length was about eight miles, and five of Stephenson’s locomotives were working on it, under the direction of his brother Robert. In building this line George Stephenson was thoroughly practical. Although he knew that his name was becoming more and more identified with the locomotive engine, he did not hesitate to use stationary engines wherever he considered that they would be more economical. In the Hetton Railway, which ran for a part of its distance through rough country, he used stationary engines wherever he could not secure grades that would make locomotives practicable. His own steam-engines traveled over this line at the rate of about four miles an hour, and each was able to draw a train of seventeen coal wagons, weighing about sixty-four tons.

The coal mines of the Midlands and the north of England had been the original inducement to inventors to build engines that would draw cars, and the manufacturing needs of Manchester and Liverpool were now gradually inducing promoters to consider building railroads. The growth of Manchester and the towns close to it was tremendous, the cotton traffic between Manchester and Liverpool had jumped to enormous figures, and men felt that some new method of communication must be found. Robert Fulton’s friend, the Duke of Bridgewater, had been of some help with his canal system, but the trade quickly outstripped this service. Then William James, a man of wealth and influence, a large landowner and coal-operator, took up the subject of a Liverpool and Manchester Railway with some business friends, and had a survey of such a line begun. His men met with every possible resistance from the country people, who had no wish to have “Puffing Billys” racing through their fields; bogs had to be crossed and hills leveled; and it soon appeared that the cost of a road would be very expensive. The local authorities gave James and his associates some encouragement, but those members of Parliament he approached were more or less opposed to his plans. The time was not yet quite ripe for the road, but the needs of trade were growing more and more pressing.

Meantime Mr. Pease was again growing eager to build his Darlington and Stockton line. Near the end of the year 1821 two men called at his house. One introduced himself as Nicholas Wood, viewer at Killingworth, and then presented his companion, George Stephenson, of the same place. Stephenson had letters to Mr. Pease, and after a talk with him, persuaded him to go to the Killingworth Colliery and see his locomotives. Pease was much impressed with the engines he saw there, and even more with Stephenson’s ability as a practical engineer. The upshot of the matter was that Pease reported the results of his visit to the directors of his company, and they authorized him to secure Stephenson’s services in surveying the line they wished to build. He took up the work, made careful surveys and reports, and was finally directed to build a railway according to his own plans. This he did, working with the best corps of assistants and the most efficient materials he could find. When the line was nearly completed he made a tour of inspection over it with his son and a young man named John Dixon. Dixon later recalled that Stephenson said to the two as they came to the end of their trip, “Now, lads, I will tell you that I think you will live to see the day, though I may not live so long, when railways will come to supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the Great Highway for the king and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway than to walk on foot. I know there are great and almost insurmountable difficulties that will have to be encountered; but what I have said will come to pass as sure as we live.”

In spite of the powerful opposition that the company encountered, and the threats of the road trustees and others, the Stockton and Darlington line was opened for travel on September 27, 1825. A great concourse of people had gathered to see the opening of this first public railway. Everything went well. Stephenson himself drove the engine, and the train consisted of six wagons, loaded with coal and flour, then a special passenger coach, filled with the directors and their friends, then twenty-one wagons temporarily fitted with seats for passengers, and then six wagons of coal, making thirty-four carriages in all. A contemporary writer says, “The signal being given the engine started off with this immense train of carriages; and such was its velocity, that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles an hour; and at that time the number of passengers was counted to be four hundred and fifty, which, together with the coals, merchandise, and carriages, would amount to near ninety tons. The engine, with its load, arrived at Darlington, a distance of eight and three-quarter miles, in sixty-five minutes. The six wagons loaded with coals, intended for Darlington, were then left behind; and, obtaining a fresh supply of water and arranging the procession to accommodate a band of music, and numerous passengers from Darlington, the engine set off again, and arrived at Stockton in three hours and seven minutes, including stoppages, the distance being nearly twelve miles.” By the time the train reached Stockton there were about six hundred people riding in the cars or hanging on to them, and the train traveled on a steady average of four to six miles an hour from Darlington.

This road was primarily built to transport freight, and passengers were in reality an afterthought. But the directors decided to try a passenger coach, and accordingly Stephenson built one. It was an uncouth carriage, looking something like a caravan used at a country fair. The doors were at the ends, a row of seats ran along each side of the interior, and a long deal table extended down the centre. Stephenson called this coach the “Experiment,” and in a short time it had become the most popular means of travel between Stockton and Darlington.

With the Stockton and Darlington Railway an assured and successful fact, the men who had been interested in building a line between Liverpool and Manchester earlier took up the subject again. Some improvement in the means of communication between the two cities was more needed than ever. The three canals and the turnpike road were often so crowded that traffic was held up for days and even weeks. In addition the canal charges were excessive. On the other hand the railway builders had to meet the opposition of the powerful canal companies and landowners along the line they wished to open, and it took time and ingenuity to accomplish working adjustments.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway bill came up for consideration in the House of Commons early in 1825. A determined stand was made against it, and the promoters and their engineers, chief among whom was Stephenson, had to be very modest in their claims. Stephenson had said to friends that he was confident that locomotives could be built that would carry a train of cars at the rate of twenty miles an hour, but such a claim would have been received by the public as ridiculous, and the engineer laughed to scorn. His opponents tried to badger him in every way they could, and ridicule even his modest statements. “Suppose now,” said one of the members of Parliament in questioning him, “one of these engines to be going along a railroad at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, and that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the engine; would not that be a very awkward circumstance?” “Yes,” answered Stephenson, with a twinkling eye, “very awkward—for the coo!”

In fact very few of the members understood Stephenson’s invention at all. A distinguished barrister represented about the general level of ignorance when he said in a speech, “Any gale of wind which would affect the traffic on the Mersey would render it impossible to set off a locomotive engine, either by poking the fire, or keeping up the pressure of the steam till the boiler was ready to burst.” Against such opposition it was not surprising that the bill failed of passage that year.

But the necessities of commerce could not be denied, and the following year the bill came up again, and was passed. Stephenson, as principal engineer of the railway, at once began its building. This in itself was a unique and very remarkable feat. An immense bog, called Chat Moss, had to be crossed, and Stephenson was the only one of the engineers concerned who did not doubt whether such a crossing were really possible. Ditches that were dug to drain the bog immediately filled up; as soon as one part was dug out the bog flowed in again; it swelled rapidly in rainy weather, and piles driven into it would sink down into the mire. But Stephenson finally built his road across it. A matting of heath and the branches of trees was laid on the bog’s surface, and in some places hurdles interwoven with heather; this floating bed was covered over with a few inches of gravel, and on this the road proper was constructed. In addition to the crossing of Chat Moss a tunnel of a mile and a half had to be cut under part of Liverpool, and in several places hills had to be leveled or cut through. The old post-roads had never had to solve such problems, and George Stephenson deserves to rank as high as a pioneer of railroad construction as he does as builder of the working locomotive.

The directors of the railway were anxious to secure the best engine possible, and opened a general competition, naming certain conditions the engine must fulfil. Stephenson and Henry Booth built the “Rocket,” and, as this was the only engine that fulfilled all the conditions, took the prize. The “Rocket” was by far the most perfect locomotive yet built, having many new improvements that Stephenson had recently worked out.

The “Rocket” would make thirty miles an hour, a wonderful achievement, and was put to work drawing the gravel that was used in building the permanent road across Chat Moss. With the aid of such a powerful engine the work went on more rapidly, and in June, 1830, a trial trip was made from Liverpool to Manchester and back. There was a huge gathering at the stations at each end of the line. The train was made up of two carriages, filled with about forty passengers, and seven wagons loaded with stores. The “Rocket” drew this train from Liverpool to Manchester in two hours and one minute, and made the return trip in an hour and a half. It crossed Chat Moss at the rate of about twenty-seven miles an hour.

The public opening of the new road occurred on September 15, 1830. By that time Stephenson had built eight locomotives, and they were all ready for service. Much of the opposition of the general public had been overcome, and the opening was considered a great national event. The Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, and many other prominent men were present. George Stephenson drove the first engine, the “Northumbrian,” and was followed by seven other locomotives and trains, carrying about 600 passengers. Stephenson’s son drove the second engine, and his brother the third. They started from Liverpool, and the people massed along the line cheered and cheered again as they saw the eight trains speed along at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour.

One of the First Locomotives