WHO BEGAN RAILROADS—"PUFFING BILLY."

Familiar as it has become to us, who does not stop to look with interest at the puffing, snorting, screaming steam-horse? And who does not rejoice in the iron-rail, which binds together with its slender threads the north and the south, and makes neighbours of the east and the west?

"Who began railroads?" ask the boys again and again.

The first idea of the modern railroad had its birth at a colliery nearly two hundred years ago. In order to lighten the labour of the horses the colliers let straight pieces of wood into the road leading from the pit to the river where the coal was discharged; and the waggons were found to run so much easier, that one horse could draw four or five chaldrons. As wood quickly wore out, and moreover was liable to rot, the next step was nailing plates of iron on the wooden rail, which gave them for a time the name of "plateway" roads. A Mr. Outram making still farther improvements, they were called Outram roads, or, for shortness' sake, "tram-roads"; and tramroads came into general use at the English collieries.

"There's mischief in those tramroads," said a large canal owner, foreseeing they would one day push canal stock quite out of the market.

Improvements thus far had centred on the roads. To convey heavy loads easier and faster was the point aimed at. Nobody had yet thought of self-going teams. Watt, the father of steam-engines, said steam-carriages might be built. He, however, never tried one; but rather left the idea to sprout in the brain of an old pupil of his, William Murdock, who did construct a very small one, running on thin wheels, and heated by a lamp. It was a curious success in its way, and set other minds thinking.

One of these was a tin-miner of Cornwall, Captain Trevethick, a friend of Murdock, who joined a cousin of his in getting a patent for building a steam-carriage. It was built, and an odd piece of machinery it was. It ran on four wheels over a common road, looked like a stage-coach, and delighted both the inventor and his friends. They determined to exhibit it at London. While on its journey, driving it one day at the top of its speed, they saw a toll-gate in the distance; not being able to check it in time, bump it went against the gate, which flew open in a trice, leaving the affrighted tollman, in answer to their inquiries, "How much to pay?" only able to gasp out, "No—noth-ing to pay—drive off as fast as you can! nothing to pay!"

It reached London in safety, and was some time on exhibition. Multitudes flocked to see it, and some called it a "fiery dragon."

"Ah," said Sir Humphrey Davy, very much interested in the invention, "I hope to see the captain's 'dragons' on all the roads of England yet."

But the captain exhibited it only as a curiosity, the unevenness of the roads rendering it for all practical purposes a failure; and the captain had neither pluck nor genius enough to lay or clear a track for it himself. This was in 1803.

The idea, however, was in England, lodging itself here and there in busy brains; until at last a colliery owner in Newcastle, seeing the great advantage of having a locomotive on his tram-roads, determined to try what he could do. Accordingly he had one built after the Cornish captain's model. It burst up at starting. Noways baffled, he tried again. The engine proved a clumsy affair, moved at a snail's pace, often got off the rails, and at length, voted by the workmen a "perfect plague," it was taken off. The unsuccessful inventor was called a fool by his neighbours, and his efforts an apt illustration that "a fool and his money are soon parted." In spite of failure, Mr. Blackett had faith that the thing could be done. He built a third, and ran it on the tramroad that passed by old Bob Stephenson's cottage door. And George at his colliery, seven miles off, as you may suppose, listened to every account of it with profound interest. Over he went, as often as he could, to see "Black Billy," a rough specimen of machinery at best, doing very little service beyond what a good horse could do.

George carried "Black Billy" back in his mind to Killingworth, studying its defects and laying plans to improve it. I do not know how long he was coming to it, but he at length gave it as his opinion that he could make a better "travelling engine" than that.

Tidings came to Killingworth about this time that the trial of a new engine was to take place on a certain day at Leeds, and George did not lose the chance of being present. Though the engine moved no faster than three miles an hour, its constructor counted it a success. It proved, however, unsteady and unreliable, and at last blew up, which was the end of it.

What did George think then? He more than ever wanted to try his hand at the business. Lord Ravensworth, knowing enough of Stephenson to have faith in him, hearing of this, advanced means for the enterprise. Good tools and good workmen were alike wanting; but after much labour, alteration, and anxiety, in ten months' time the engine was completed and put on the railway, July 25, 1814.

Although the best yet made, it was awkward and slow. It carried eight loaded waggons of thirty tons' weight at a speed not above four miles an hour. The want of springs occasioned a vast deal of jolting, which damaged the machinery, and at the close of a year's trial it was found about as costly as horse-power.

How to increase the power of his engine—that was the puzzling question which George studied to answer. He wrestled with it day and night, and at length determined to try again. In due time another was built, "Puffing Billy," which most persons looked upon as a marvel, but, shaking their heads, prophesied it would make a terrible blow-up some day. "Puffing Billy," however, went to work, and worked steadily on, a vast advance on all preceding attempts. It attracted little or no attention outside the narrow circle of the collieries. The great men of England did not know that in a far-off nook of the realm there was slowly generating a power, under the persistent thought of a humble working-man, which, before many years, would revolutionize the trade of the kingdom and create a new source of wealth.

"Puffing Billy," in fact, humble as its pretensions were, has proved to have been the type of all locomotives since.

Had George Stephenson satisfied himself? No. His evenings were chiefly spent at home with his son Robert, now under him in the colliery, studying and discussing together how to evoke the hidden power yet pent up in "Puffing Billy." The son was even more sanguine than his father, and many an amendment had "Billy" to undergo to satisfy the quick intellect and practical judgment of the youth.

Mr. Stephenson, delighted with Robert's scientific tastes and skill, and ever alive to the deficiencies of his own education, was anxious to give him still further advantages. For this purpose he took him from a promising post at the colliery and sent him to the University of Edinburgh.

Here he enjoyed a six months' course of study; and so well prepared was he for it by his wellformed habits of application and thinking, that he gained in six months as much as many a student did in three years. Certain it was his father felt amply repaid for the draft it made on his purse, when Robert reappeared at the cottage in the spring, with a prize for successful scholarship in mathematics. He was eighteen then.