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stated in any of its pabllcations.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.

By T. T. Vernon Smith, M. Can. Soo. C.E.
To be read on 31st Jamiary, or 14/// February.

A series of railway articles, by Mr. T. Curtis Clarke, have recently
app^iared, in a leadinji magazine, which have been decidedly interestiujg
and deservedly popular, but they contain a number of statements which,
desi«iued to please American readers, are by no means correct in fact or
generous to the engineers of other nationalities. Old country engineers
have learned to regard railways an<l the locomotive, especially in its
present form, as their undisputed invention and introduction, and al-
though they are not so ungenerous as to claim every individual im-
provement, yet they consider that in this one department of engineering,
the great bulk of the evolution of the present railway has been peculiarly
British, and that Anjerieans have not contributed a great deal to-
wards the ujechanicai and scientific triumph that we now sec. The
first number of these i)apers is particularly guilty and ungracious in
claiming for American inventors everything valuable and important
tliathas been found out. "The modern railway," says Mr. Clarke,
' rt'as created by the Stephensons in 1830, wlicn they built the loco-
motive Hockct. The development of the railway since is due to the de-
velopment of the locomotive." " The earlier locomotives of this country
modelled after the Rocket, weighed five or six tons, and could draw
on a level^about 40 tons. After the American improvements, which
we shall describe, were made, our engines weighed 25 tons, and could
draw on a level some sixty loaded cars, weighing 1,200 tons. The
Sti'phenson type once fixed has remained unchanged (in Europe), except
in detail, to the present day." " When we come to the United States
we find an entirely different state of things. The key to the evolution
of the American railway is the contempt for authority displayed by our
engineers, and the untranmielled way in which they invented and ap-
plied whatever they thought would answer the best purpose, regardless
of precedent." " When we began to build our railways in 1831, we
followed Enulish patterns for a short time but our engineers soon saw
tiiat unless vital changes were made, our money would not hold out,
and necessity truly became the mother of invention. The first and
most far-seeing invention was that of the swivelling truck, which enables
the engine to run round curves of almost any radius. This enabled us
to build much less expensive lines than those of England, for we could
avoid hills and other (»bstacles. The swivelling truck was first sug-
gested by Horatio Allen for the South Carolina Railway in 1831,
but the fir.st piactical use of it was made upon the Mohawk and Hud-
son Railroad in the same year. It is said to have been invented by
John B. Jervis, Chi.if Engineer of that road. The next improvement
was the e<iualizing beams or levers, by which the weight of the engine
is always borne by three out of four or more driving wheels. The

■i

a double truck car precisely as wo now see them, and what was morcj^it,
had seats with reversible backs, as now universal in America, though
they were never commonly used in England. This identical car was
only used on the Liverpool and Manchester for a short time, and was
subsequintly sold to the Newcastle and North Shields, where numbers
may still renionibcr it as beiui;' ocea'^ionally used oq the Sunday trains.
The early history of railways begins altogether with the private un-
chartered roads of Great Hrituin, for although a railway company was
chartered in the last century, and the first public railway that was
actually construct^Ml dates from the first ye^r of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, all these early public; roads were worked by horses, and contributed
nothing of cither seieiititic or mechanical interest until the Stockton and
Darlington of 1825. Duiing this quaiter of a century, however, the
private roads had solved most of the important mechanijal questions
upon which all the subsequent evolution ol' railways depends. Although
Mr. Clarke sneers at the results of all the experiments and investigations
prior to the era of the Jloekit, there were but few important points in
railway practice unsolved at the date of the Eainhill experiments, either
in the construction of the railway or the locomotive. Since 1S12 loco-
motives had been in c.nstant daily use on a number of private railways,
and these lines had been constructed and were being worked with just
as rii'ld a regard to economy, and with as successful a record for eco-
nomical v'ork, as anything since discovered. The old Stockton and
Darlington was laid out, not only Wfth a strict regard to economy, but to
make the best and most perfect road that could be obtained between
its termini, and it remains to this d. y as complete and finished a line as
can be produced, nor is there in existence, as far as the author knows,
anything vastly in advance <jf the old Quakers road finished five years
before there was a railway of any kind in America. Even the latest
improvement introduced on the New York Central, for the advancement
and recreation of their employees, might tab; a leaf with advantage,
from the experi(Miee of the Stockton and Darlington 40 years since,
on the management of the railway employees' reading, coffee and
recreation rooms, which were first introdneed and are still perhaps the
most successfully managed on this good old railway.

From Woods' Treatise on Railways, the first edition of whi- was
published in 1825, we learn that the date of the introduction of railways
into the Newcastle district was between the years 1602 and 1(549.
These were of timber entirely. In 1738 cast iron rails were substituted
for the wooden upper stringer, which was made of hardwood and
took the wear of tiie wheels. In 1747 the Colebrookdale Company
replaced their M'ooden rails with cast-iron, and iron wheels were intro-
duced in 1753. Trauiplates of the section used by Outram had been
in use before his daj, being first laid, it i-< supposed, on the Duke of Nor-
folk's i a ilv ay near Sheffield in 1776, and the original shape was im.
Droved uuou on the Surrey tframway, ^ ijeh Jias the honor of being the
first public railway built uinler .n. Act of Parliament. This pioneer
railwi. obtained its Act in 1801, exten.led from tiie Thames at Wands-
worth, to Meisham and lli-igate, being with branches 28 miles in length,
and was subse(|uently sold t*. tin- Brighton Company and torn up. In
1703, Outram, from whom the tramway takes its name, laid down a
number of tramways in Derbyshire, and introduced the stone blocks
under the mds of the tranq)lates, which for a time displaced the former
wooden sleepers, and were used by the Stephensonsand others in all the
early railways. The first edge railway, which is the parent of our pre-
sent railway, wa^ laid in 1^-01, lor the conveyance of slaU; from Lord
Peurhyn's (|uarries in Noith Wales, and within a few years all the

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question of adhesion, is proof sufficient that they were a snccess. To '^
Stephenson's first engine in 1814, belongs the very great honor of being
the machine that set at rest this vexed question of adhesion, whether \
the engine could i)ro])el itself on the rails to do any appi'eciable work j
without sonic otlicr contrivance tlKin depending upon its own weight.
There was nothing in the '.-ngine itself that was widely dift'erent from
Trevithick's or Blcnkinsopp's engines, yet one had fiiiled and the other had
shunned the great (juestion. He could give no reason for his faith, but
he had made some experiments on friction, and he and his bosom friend,
William ITutchinson, spent a very anxiou-< night in a private trial of
the engine bt'fore her public exhibition and trial on tlie following day,
July 25tli, 1814, when Lord llavensworth, who Lud found the money
to build the engine, the Brandlings and other leading coal owners were
invited to be present. This engine settled tliis one important question,
on which more than anything else the modern locomotive rests for its
utility. The; next year, 1815, and on the same railway the second
great discovery was made almost by accident on a second of George
Stephenson's engines. Hitherto the locomotive engines had exhausted
their waste st\am into the open air, and on a neighboring railway
Mr. Blackett's engine h;id got the name of Puffing Hilly, and frightened
the horses and cattle for a mile away. In Stephen.son's second engine
tlie exhaust pipcis wore turned into the chimney,/^nd a wonderfully
enhanced clFect in its steam-raising properties was at once found.
StLphenson constructed a number of locomotives after this at Killing-
worth, (>ach embodying some improvement over its predecessor, and
that these engines were not so very much behind more modern
examples is shown by the fact t!iat one of them, built for the Kilmar-
nock and Troon Railway, in 1817, worked continuously until 1848,
when she was broken up.

In 1822, George Stephenson's first railway for which he acted as
engineer, the Hetton railway, was opened with six of his locomotives
built !it the Killingworth shops. This was a private railway belonging
to the Hetton Colliery, but was far in advance of any previous road in
its character and details. It h;id wrought iron rails, and for 20 years
afterwards no important change was mtide either in the road or the
locomotives which all remairtetl very much as Stephenson left them, when
he transferred his services as engineer from the Hetton Company to the
Stockton and J)arlington, which was a public railway constructed under
an Act of Parliament, and tiie first important line thath;id been so con-
structed, for although 24 railways before the Stockton and Darlington
had obtained ehariers and were most of them in operation, they were
none of them e(|ual in importance or character to the road now under
construction by the Quaker coal proprietors of Darlington. On the
27th September, Ui25, this railway was opened, was then and has been
ever since a model road. It attracted an immense deal of public atten-
tion, and produced in fact a sort of a railway mania. Scores of Acts of
incorpoiation were applied for, and of these 21 roads were completed
within the next 'iaw years. So that 1825 is really the date from which
British railway construction may be said to commence. Of ihe roads
chartered in that year the Monkland and Kirkintilloch opened in 1827,
the Canterbury and VVbitstaple, and the Cromford and High Peak
opened early ir 1830, the Leicester and Swannington on which was a
tunnel 1} miles long, and the Liverpool and Manchester, opened'
in September 18IUI, the Dundee and Newtyle, Bolton and Leigh and
the Glasg(tw and Gainkirk all opened t!arly in 1831, were all roads on
which the work was of a superior character and all aided in the devel-
oj>ment ol' the nioiKrn railway. As all these roads were designed for
locfHiiotives, the (ruestion ol' supplvinij; the necessarv m:ichin(.'rv for these

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were thciy with the accumulation of wovk, that only seven of the new
engines were placed on the Liverpool and Manchester ready for the
opening. Of these the Meteor, Comet, Dart and Arrow had 10 x 16
cylinders, the last named heinij; the first engine ihat croased Chat Moss
and made the continuous run from iM.'inchester to Liverpool. The
other three engines, the I'hd'nix, North Star .uid Northumbrian, with
11 X 16 cylinders, were delivered just before the opening. On that oc-
casion the Northumbrian was driven by George Stephenson himself, and
after the necident to Mr. Husskison, took the dying statesman to his
home, 15 miles in 25 minutes. All these engines were soon found to
have grave defects, they were too small for the trains and at anything
like speed they were rough and uuHtea<ly. A new design was now adop-
ted with larger cylinders and longer bearing upon the road, and the worl s
at Newcastle were pushed ni'^lit and day to turn out locomotives fast
enough. The Planet, M.ijestic, Mercury, and five others were got out
early in the following year 1831, and ten others, all of the Planet class,
were delivered at Liverpool before the end of the year or early in J 832.
Other builders were now in the Held, an<l Stephenson built but few
engines for the Liverpool and Maiehester after this. Amongst others,
Bury's works started in Liverpool in 1831, and it was his class of loco-
motive iind not Stephenson's that Norris, Baldwin and others in
America principally tooktheir ideas from.

As the invention of the truck is claimed almost universally for
America, and as it liassubse(]U(ntly become a prominent feature in the
American locomotive it may he as well to place on record a few fact),
that at least go to prove that the Newcastle shops had something to do
with the invention, llcratio Allen was sent to England by the Dela-
ware and Hudson Canal Co.. in the fall of 1828, to examine the Eng-
lish railways, and with instrueiions to order two or three locomotives.

He found Steplienson's works as stated above crowded with work and
unable to take his ovder, so it was finally placed with Forster and
Kastrick. The Stourbridge Linj:, the first of these, was delivered in
May 1829, and was pro})ably the first locomotive ever seen in America,
It was intended that this engine siiould open the railway to the mines
on the 4th of July, but the locomotive did not arrive till the 23rd, and
was tried on the 1st of Auirust. The engine, which was of th.e Killing
worth type with two flues, was a perfect success, but the road, of hem.
lock longitudinals 8 x 10 and a strap rail, spiked down to cross sleepers, 10
feet apart, was too light to carry the; weight, and the expense of altering
it was deemed too much. f*'o the engine was housed in a shanty for
some years. The boiler was afterwards set to work at Carbondale, and
the rest of the machinery was never u^ed. The seeond engine was
probably never set to work, at all events, as a locomotive. The first
English engine that was actually w(»rked in America was the Kobert
Fulton, built by Robert Stephenson & Co., and the drawings which
accompanied it were dated July 4th, 1S31. In the winter of 1832-3,
this engine which was of the l*lai:et class was altered, and fitted with
a truck similar to the Kxperiment engine then on the Hudson and
Mohawk Railway, under the direction of , I. B. Jarvis, and re-christened
the John Bull. It is this incident, I think, that has lead to an error,
in attributing to Mr. Jarvis the invention of the truck, \\\ looking over
the old drawings i»i Stephenson's office, there is a difficulty in tracing
the consecutive numl)ers, from the fact that in some cases the railway,
or party ordering the engine, is put in place of the number on the draw-
ings, some of the locomotives were built to numbers and some to names,
but the presumption is that the numbers, where traceable, are consecu-
tive. The liocket as before stated was No, 19 and built in 1829. The
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and durinj^ the following winter, tlic Stephensou engine Jolin Bull was
altered to be liko the three truck entwines thiit they already iiad.

Besides the sixteen engines built by Stephenson, sent out to Au)ericaiQ
these early years of American railroads, Hury sent an engine out to
Anii'riea in 1831, and others in 1832 and 1833, and the first engines
built by Norris between 1833 and 1837 were in these details aloiost
exact copies of Bury's arrangement. Baldwin's first engine in 18312
was a copy of the first Stephenson engine sent out to the United States,
similar to the Liverpool iind Manchester Planet chiss, although Baldwin
subsequently adopttnl the Bury boiler and inside frame, and Stephenson's
truck, and from this combination has been d<!V(>lo|)ed the pre.-ent Ameri-
can type, precisely as in Knglan<l the Stephenson and Bury types,
amalgamated and improved, have developiid the bulk of tlie present
locomotive forms. Bury fi-om a very early day w»8. Stephenson's prin-
cipal opponent in thn locomotive design, and from 1836 to 1848, it was
a moot question whieli was the better engine. The differences were
broadly marked and irreconeileable. Stephenson's .stundard engine hud
an outside frame with six wheels, and after 1842 with along boiler and
all the wheels under tlie barrel of the boiler. Bury's engines had only
four wheels with an inside frame. Stephenson's fire box was square in plan,
Bui'y's semicirjular. Stephenson's fr.ime was of onk, the sides sand-
wiched between iron plates, and latterly a single iron plate with the
horn plates for the axle cut out of the solid. Bury's was a built frame
inside the wheels very similar to the American frame of to-day, which
in fact has been evolvccl and improved from his type. The cylinders of
Stephenson's engines were fastened, in fact rivetted, into the smoke-box.
Bury's were carried as in the modern engines by the frameplates, the
one was a massive heavy-looking design, fit only for a first class railway,
fastened and bolted together as if built to last forever. Bury's engines,
witii their light skeleton frames and all their machinery in sight, looked
unsubstantial and temporary beside the other, but proved in practice
more acccf^sible for repairs and renewals, and better adapted for rough
usage. In 1837, the London and Birmingham Railway was opened
with no of Bur_) s engines, and Bury himself became the locomotive
superintendent, although Robert Stephenson was the chief engineer of
the railway. Of the two types of engines of that day, probably Bury's
engine up to 13 inches in diameter was the better machine, but when
heavier locomotives were required, the Stephenson type had tiie advan-
tage. Burya frauie inside the wheels and the cylinders bolted to the
frame was, however, undoubtedly the best arrangement, and both in
England and America this is now almost universal.

Mr. Clarke claims for American engineers the invention of two things,
which he seems to think the important improvements that have re-
volutionized the locomotive and made it the success it is. The truck is
before referred to, and that it is an improvement in ordinary work is
undoubted. At the same time it must be borne in mind that it has not
been univer.^ally adopted, and of the locomotives that have recently done
sucli marvellous work between London and Edinburgh, undoubtedly the
best locomotive performance that ever has been d(nie, the truck was not
adopted on the en<:iiios that did the best running, whilst tlie one that did
the worst happened to bo a truck-engine. Comparatively few of the
European engines have the American truck, and on some lines, like the
North Western, Midlatid,and Great Western, with 6000 locomotives
on the throe lines, it has never been adopted. The equalizing
lever on long engines of American construction is, no doubt, es-
sential, and either it or the Austrian contrivance of bell crank
attachme?itto the springs with a link between them, the latter, a lighter
and perliai)s better arranucmont. is an excellent relief on rough roads ; ^

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not be tiblO l(» compoU' witli Ciinuls for economical transport, and as
nmch of this as p sible was a water level to be Konie day us he exj)ected
transformed into a canal. Of the M miles, 2f).^ were a dead level.
Five iiielines.of which four were within »lu' first four niilea,earried the road
984 fivt veitieally in :>:{0(; yards, and f.mr inclines at the Westentl low-
ered it again 7:V.» feet in 1^112 yards. Two twelve mile levels were to be
worked by loeoniotiv.-s. " There are few curves," says Mr. Clarke, "of
less than 1,000 feet ladins on Kuropean railways, whilst the swivelling
track euiibicd us (Americans) t(t build much less expensive lines than
those of Kngland, for we could now avoid hills and other obstacles at
will." The curves on the High Peak were all of l:{2 feet radius, the
rails were cast to thiit curve, and it was an immense saving to have
them all uniform, and the rails to the e.xact radius. The locomotives were
not truck engines,they were four wheel engine.-i,aud the wheels only, 3 feet
G inches centres were closer together than the wheels of a truck usually
are, and as close, in f ict, as they could l)e placed. Hound these curves
between 43 and 44 dei;rees of curvature ; these engines, with the device
'f running on the flanges on the outside guard rail, ran easily enough,
and the locomotives, though small, on this beautifully laid road, heavy
rails and broken stone ballast, could handli! a very respectable train, as
much as could be brongl.t up the inclines at two hauls. Mr. Clarke
further says : " The elimbing capabilities of a locomotive upon smooth
rails were not known until in IH'yl, Mr. Latrobe tried atempt)rary gra-
dient of 10 per cent. This dai ing feat has never been equalled." Now
this statement is somewhat rash. The (luestion (»i' gradients and adhesion
was abcmt as exhaustivi-ly gone into on a score of jtrivate railways in
England as it coidd be belon" the experiments on the Cromford and
High Peak, made in the interest of the Mont Cenis railway, conclu-
sively settled the maxinnini -radient that it would be safe to use acro.ss
the Alps previous to tlie opening of the IMout (/cnis tunnel. With
ordinary locomotives a 1 per cent, rise is not practicable, on a very
fine day, the Cromfoid and High Peak engines with a very ingenious
sanding arrangenitmt could go U}) the Hindlow plane of 1 in 13. On a
wet day they could not ; but the Fell engines, which were tried on this
road preparatory to their being sent to France, could go up any plane,
('and the steepest, the Upper (joyt, was a little better thai* 1 it; T^Vnd take
one or two waggons behind her. Tiw author is not awaie, and is much
surprised thereat, that the piinci)>le of the Fell engine has ever been tried
in America on some of the temporary roads, the switchbacks that Mr.
Clarke seems to think are peculiarly an American invention. From the
experiments on thisroail, they are perfectly reliable u]> to gradients of 1
in 12,and will take llieir own weight behind them up such a grade. The (me
in use on the Ciomford and lligli Peak weighed a little over 13 long tons,
say 30,000 lbs., and she could take easily 4 cars, each weighing with
their load 15,000 lbs. orOO,(lOO lbs., together double her own weight, up
the Whaley plane, averaging I in 13, or a rise of 40() feet in the mile.
Mr. Clarke can scarcely have known of these engines, which worked
for three years the continental traffic between Fiance and the East qi
Europe, or he w 'uld not have made some of t!ie statements in this
Magazine ai tide. Another great mistake made in connection with Eng-
lish and Europe.-m practice is the general idea of Mr. Clarke and others
in America that everything there i.s stationary and nnchanged, and
that the tiux; of evolution ami improvement has long since set in Europt

to be found now only in America.

Says M

type of engine once fixed has remained unc
detail, to the present day. European
weight and power, and in ]

Clarke : "' The Stephenson

mged in Europe, except in

locomotives have increased in

1 in iterfeetion of material and workmanship, but

tives built bv the tireat firm

to buil.l much h'HS cxiH'usive Hues than tho.se of P^ngland, for we could
avoid hills and other obstacles. The swivelling truck was first sug-
gested by Horatio Allen for the South CaroliDa liailway in 1831,
but the fir,st puictical use of it was made upon the Mohawk and Hud-
son Railroad in the same year. It is said to have been invented by
John B. Jervis, Chief Engineer of that road. The next iinproveraent ^
was the equalizing beams or levers, by which the weight of the engine
is always borne by three out of four or more driving wheels. The ^^^^^
original imported English locomotives could not be kept on the rails of ^
rough tracks." " Another American invention is the switch-back, by
whkh the length of line required to ease the gradient is obtained by ^ ^;.,.
running backwards and forwards in a zigzag course, instead of going ^, ^

strai-iht up the mountain. This device was first used amongst the hills
of Pennsylvania over 40 years ago, to lower cars down into the Nesque-
honing Valley." Now this is sufficient to shew the general style of
claimhig everything that has led up to the present development of
railways for American engineers only. Excepting to the Stephenson's,
not one particle of credit is hinted at as belonging to anyone else.
Touching however the American invention of the switch-back, Mr. Curtis
C;iarke's°elaim of 40 years' w^Q in Pennsylvania is not sufficient. In
Tom Moore's Epicurean, written in 1800, a good 40 years before
that again, is a capital description of the switchback, and by it the
pretty priestess of the Egyptian temple saves the life of her lover-
Tom Moore wrote souio of his finest po<2try, including Lalla Rookh
and the Epicurean, in the heart of the lead mining district of Derby-
shire, where tho '' iwitch-back " has been in use for a century, as a
means of bringing tiie materials to the smelting works in the valleys.
At Asheton's Smkh's slate quarries, 20 or 30 of these, benched into the
mountain side, may be s^een one above the other, bringing down the
slates over 2,000 feet vertically in as many leet horizontally measured
directly up the mountain. All that American engineers invented iu
this contrivance was the name, and as for some of the other claims that
are inferentially supposed to have evolved the American locomotive and
railway from the primitive rudeness of the English original, it may
prove that the improvements rest upon an equally poor foundation.

In comparing English and American practice, especially in the earlier
days of railways, one great .«ource of confusion and mistake, made by
American authors, arises Irom the I'act that in England there have always
been two distinct classes of railway, one chartered by Act of Parliament
the affairs canvassed aud discussed every half year, and all their pecu-
liarities and inventions thoroughly ventilated by the papers and in other
ways, whilst the others are strictly private, their proceedings, experi-
ments and practir ' utterly unknown to the public, and but seldom
finding their way into the public press. Yet these " private " railways
preced^ed the public lines by years; until quite recently even their
mileage was in excess of the public lines, and almost every important
invention that has led to the result of the modern locomotive, and the
existing railway was invented, tested and developed on the private rail-
ways of Great Britain, aud many of the most important of them years ^
before there was a mile of railway in America, The double trucked
car for instance, which in Mr. Clarke's paper is claimed as the invention . , , .

of Ivoss VVinans, was iii use lur cafijing iimucr cUs.. -nij^ „_-„.

thfc.d was a road in America at all ; and the passenger car out of which
Mr. Husskicson descended to meet his death, oq the memorable day
that preceded the opening of tlie Liverpgol and Manchester railway, was

■ ' •r' -^ '

... ...yC

M /iJ''

I7i)'{, ()Mti;iiii, tVdiii wlidiii tlir tiaiiiway takes its luiiii", liiiil (inwii
nuiiiber of tramways irj l»crl)ysliirc', and introduced the stone blocks
under tlu' i nds of tlu- traniplatcs, wliicli for a tinir disjilacod the former
wooden f^keiHTs, and were used by tlu- Sti^plionsonsand otiiers in all the
early railways. Tlie tir.st ed<^e railway, which \h the parent of our pre-
sent railway, was laid in 1S(M, lor the convtyanee of slate from Lord
Peurhyn's (juarries in North Wales, and within a few years all the
Nortlunnberland and Durham collieries adopted this improvement, and
the railway superseded the tramway for ever. In 1789, Mr. Jessup
constructed the public railway at JiOughborough with cast iron rails of
much the same pattern as those now used, and put flanged cast iron
wheels on the earriaires. The normal difterence between a tramway
and a railway, as then understood, was that on the latter the flange that
guided the wagi^on on the track was east upon the tramplate, whilst on
the ed"-e railway, as it was then called, the flange was upon the wheel.
The advantage that the tramway undoubtedly possessed was that the
plain faced wheel could be used oft' the plates, might run over planks
or hard ground, or into a (juarry, where there would be no necessity for
laying down a ])late. Sectionmen on the English railways, especially
in the old mining districts, are still called " plate; layers," a memento of
their original employment. In 1805 a great improvement was made
when the Walbottle Colliery introduced malleable iron rails, although
these were expensive and were only madt; in two feet lengths. In 1808
Mr. Thompson put down wrought iron rails of an improved section at
Tindale Fell near Carlisle, ai»d from that date this class of road became
comuum round the Ni'wcastle collieries. The next important improve-
ment was made in 1820, when the Bedlingtnn Iron VV^orks took up
Birkenshaw's patent, and produced a wrought iron rail 15 lectlong, with
a deepened flange between each sleeper to strengthen the unsupported
portion of the rail. These tish-bellied rails were common till long after
the Liverpool and .Manchester, OBwhieh feljey were exclusively used, was
in successful operation. This was the most important improvement yet
introduced, and linked the old waggon way to the modern railway. The
roads therefore, uiion which Blackett and Blenkinsopp and Stephenson
first introduced locomotives wee not widely different from those to
which we are now accustomed.

The first practical locomotive was undoubtedly Trevithick's, which
was placed upon the Merthyr tramway in 1803. There was no-
thing in this engine to pi event its being as great a success as Blenken.
sopp's or Stephenson's a lew years later, but it failed, from the road being
too weak to carry it, and from want of adhesion. The wheels slipped
round without propelling the machine, orecisely as in the same district
two of Sharpe's finest engines afterwards failed, and for the same reason
the old shape of the tramplates held the mud and water, and were always
excessively dirty. Had Trevithick's engine been tried on a railway in-
stead of a tramway, we should never have heard of that bug-bear,
want of adheriion that Irightened all the early engineers. To obviate this
supposed difficulty, Mr. Blenkinsopp of the Middleton Colliery, near
Leeds in 1811, took up one side of his railway, and substituted for the
rails that had been foruierly used others with large cogs cast upon the
outward edge. These cogs were six inches from centre to centre, so tlnit
there were six of them upon each three feet length of rail. His engines
were modelled after Trevitliiek's, and in August, 1812, commenced
regular worknig, and the fact that they did all the work on the railway
lor five or six years, and long after Stephenson's engines had settled the

tho Canterbury ami Whitstapli!, niu\ the Crouifbrd and ni;;h Peak
opened early in 183(1, rlie liciceHtor and Swannington on which was a
tunnel 1| miles lou<r, -ind the Liverpool and Manchester, opened'
in Scptiuibcr 1S;U), the Dundee and Newtyle, Bolton ant! Leigh and
the Glasgow and Gainkirk all opened early in 1831, were all roads on
which til.! work was of a superior eliaracter and all aided in the devel-
opment of tin; modern railway. As all these roads were designed for
locomotives, the (|uestion of supplying the nec(\ssary machinery for these
railways was ores'^iiig, ami so in 1824 the great locomotive works of
Stephenson were c(»mincnco(l, tin; parties finding the money for the Stock
ton and Darlington being the original proprietors. Nos. 1, 2 and 3 at
the Forth works Newcii.stle, turned out early in 1825, were the same
numbers on the Stockton and Darlington, and No. 1 the old "Locomotion"
is the engine that now stands on a pedestal in front of the railway '
station at J)ailington. Amongst the first engines built at Newcastle
were locomotives for the Wylam, Bedlington, and Clarence private rail-
ways, the Stanhope and Tyne, Glasgow and Garnkirk, Dundee and
Newtyle, and Cant<!rbury and VVhitstaple liailways. In 1828 the first
engine with inside horizontal cylinders, the "Twin Sisters," was built for
a Lancashire Colliery line at the Newcastle works. This marked a great
improvement in the locomotive, which though departed from in the
Eocket, built the next year for the Liverpool and Manchester experi-
ments, was readopted on all the other engines for that line, and sub-
sequently became in the Planet class the standard Stephenson locomotive.
The liocket was No. 19 at the Stephenson works, and the important
improvement that she introduced was the multitubular boiler the
original suggestion for which was made by Mr. Booth, secretary of the
liiverpool and Manchester, though the same idea had previously been
patented in France, but the Rocket was undoubtedly the first engine
built on that principle. This engine, constructed expressly to compete
for the premium offered by the Liverpool and Manchester Kailway, was
finished early in 1829, and on her completion was taken to Killingworth
and there tried on the same railway that had witnessed so many of the
early triumphs of the locomotive. But Mr. Clarke is entirely wrong
when he speaks of the Rocket as being the type of a class. She was
totally unlike, in arraniiement and details, any other engine either pre-
viously or subse(jueMtly built, and the works at Newcastle completely
revolutionized all their ideas before the second engine was produced for
the Liverpool and Manchester, The fliults of the Rocket were apparent
from the first day. The glory of being the prize winner in the first
locomotive contest was tarnished the next year by her being the engine
that killed Husskison, the member for Liverpool, and one of the
warmest supporters of the railway. She was not long employed on the
Liverpool and Manchester. She was too light for the work, and in 1831
was sold to Mr. Thompson of Kirkhouse near Carlisle, where she once
ran at the rate of nearly fifty miles an hour, with the news of the success-
ful winner of the Carlisle election. Subsequently bought by the
Government for the Kensington Museuu), she now commands attention
as having largely eouti ibuted to the success of the railway system and
the evolution of the locomotive. After the decision at Rainhill the
Newcastle shops were busy with the engines for the Liverpool and Man-
chester, and for the other linos that opened about the same time, The
type of engine selected was an inside horizontal cylinder engine with a
heavy outside frame, with outside bearings on t\w axle, and so pressed

in attrihutinjj; to Mr. Jtirvis tin- iuventidii uC tlio truck. In looking over
the old (IrawingH in 8t«|»lu'ns(in".s ottiit;, there is a difficulty in tracing
the consecutive nuuiliers, from ihe fact tlh.t in some cases the railway,
or party ordering the engine, is put in pliice of the number on the draw-
ings, some of the locomotives were built to numbers and some to names,
but the presumption is tluit the numbers, wlicre traceable, are consecu-
tive. The liocket :is before stated was No. 19 and built in 1829. The
enirine for America referred to above has on the drawings "Stevens,
New York," built in IH.'Jl. In the same year No. 31 for the Stanhope
and Tyne, No. 3«> for the Liecestor and Swaiuiington, the first 6 wheel
connected engine, and No. 37, a similar engine sent to the Liverpool
and Manchester, are so marked. The next number still in 1831 is
No. 42, ordered by the Saratoga and Scheueetady Raihvay, au engine
with 9 X 14 cylinders, 1 pair of 4', 5" driving wheels, and a truck
with 4 wheels 2', 8" diameter. In the same year but without a number
is an engine for the Hudson and Mohawk with lOx 14 cylinders, with 4
coupled wheels 4', 0" diameter. In 1832, No. 52 is simply marked
United States, a Planet engine with a single pair of drivers 5', 0" dia-
meter. No. 61 and Brother Jonathan in the same year were truck
engines built for the Hudson and Mohawk, and so was No. 75 for the
Saratoga and Schenectady, all three 10 x 10 engines, with 4 truck
wheels 2', 8" in diameter. In 1833, tliree engines were built for the
Newcastle ;ind Frenchtown liailway of the Comet (ilass with 4 coupled
wheels. They were named tlu; Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania,
and have no shop number marked on the drawings. The same year
three engines appear to have been built for the Charleston and Columbia,
the W. Aitken, the Edgefield and No. 99, and in 1834, three bogy or
truck engines Nos. 104, 10(5, were built for "Pennsylvania," so that
from the meagre records left, there are in these four years, the working
drawings of .sixteen locomotives built by Robert Stephenson & Co., for the
United States, of which seven were truck engines. There were othe^
engines built V)y Steplunson for the States, but the drawing office recordg
do not show their numbers, as tlie l*lanet and Comet classes, the first
with single drivers and the other coupled, were sent out without comment
when similar engines to these were wanted. For instance, two were
shipped to the Bangor and Oldtowti Hallway in Maine about 1836, bu
there is no number or other record of these than the fact that they were
shipped. The Hudson and Mohawk Railway was opened September
1831 ; and some time alter, but probably before the end of the year, a
locomotive called the De Witt Clinton, built at West Point Foundry,
was put upon the line, being the seccmd locomotive built in America,
the first having been put on the South Carolina Railway in 1830 and
exploding the next year. Both tlie,<e were four wheel engines. In Apple-
ton's Encyclopicdia we are told tiint in August, 1832, an engine cnlled
the Experiment was ]>laced on the Hudson and Mohawk with four swivel-
ling wheels, built by Adam Hall of the West Point Foundry. Now
putting all these stories together, it seems that in 1831, Stephen.son's
No. 42 was put upon the Schenectady road, the first, locomotive with
the four wheel truck, and at the same time Stephenson sent an engine of
the Planet class to the Hudson and Mohawk, whichVas subsequently
two years afier called the .John liull. In 1832, Stephenson sent two
engines to tiie Hud^on^and iViniiauk and another to ihe Sciieoietady
line all with the truck. In August of that year the West Point Foun-
dry put on their Experiment, probably a copy of the Stephenson engines,

tlic \v(.r-t l.a]>|Hiu'(l to Ik- a truck-onj;iii(\ (.Nmiimr.itively tow of the
European oiifiiiuis have tlio American truck, and on hoiiic lines, like the
North Western, Midlaiid^and Great Western, with 0000 locoinotive-s
on the throe lines, it has never been adopted. The eijuulizing
lever on lon<j; engines of American construction " • no doubt, es-
sential, and either it or the Austrian contrivance of boll crank
attachment to the springs with a link between them, the latter, a lighter
and perhaps better arrannement, is an excellent relief on rough roads ;
but this contrivance, althoui-h perfectly well known in Europe, is not
deemed of any great important' where the railways are in good con-
dition, it is by no moans o.ssontial, nor is it as a rule adopted on some
of the leading railways where the best designs are taken regardless of
expense. It is absurd to mark these as important developments of the
locomotive, comparable to the blast pipe on Stephenson's KillingwortU
engines, the Booth multitubular boiler, the link motion which regulates
at will the expansion of the steam, and the power of the engine as it
passes over the ever varying gradients of the roadway, or the French
invention of the injector whicli supplies the boiler with water, irrespec-
tive of the engine being in motion. If the universal adoption of an
improv< ment is to be the guage of its value in the evolution of the
locomotive, the Glasgow and Garnkirk locomotive, the St. Rollox which
was the first on which the guauc glass to see the height of water in
the boiler, or the licicester and Swannington Comet, where the familiar
whistle was first used, ought ectainly to be immortalized, and rank far
' higher than the two inventions specially claimed, and which outside of
America are not found except on a small minority of locomotives.

But Mr. Clarke goes further, he claims that in conseciuence of these
two inventions,— the truck and the equalizing level, American engmeers
were able to build cheaper and more efiicient roads than any previously
existing, that they could use sharper curves and steeper gradients than
could be worked on British lines, and construct railways economically
where the old country engineers could only make them at an enormous
expense. Now to refute these statements let us take some facts. One
of the numerous railways which obtained its charter in 1825, and was
partly opened in 1828, before there was a railway at all in
America, was the Cromford and High Peak. It was a line 34 miles
long with rails 63 pounds to the yard on stone sleepers, and all the
machinery was the best and most perfect of its kind. It had to cross
the Peak of Derbyshire, the back-bone of Enghmd, and over some of the
roughest country and the finest scenery that even still is the delight of
tourists. It connected the Canal systeni of the East coast from London
and Hull with the extension of the Duke of Bridgewater's canal from
Manchester and liiverpool, which had been completed to the foot of the
High Peak, and it was intended and fitted for a heavy freight trafl&c,
irrespective of passengers. There was necessarily a deal of heavy work,
and one tunnel near Buxton 580 yards long was unavoidable. Yet it
was finished, without its machinery, for about £4,000 per mile, and
with its seventeen incline engines and three locomotives,with all the incline
fixtures for less than £6,000. It was Outram's idea that railways would

ic\^^

1
^1 1

Jfl^^Ci^

li.sii uiul Kiir<>|M';iti |)ia<'ti('t' is llic L:i'tU'ial itica .il' Mr. Cliirkt- and otlu'is
ill Aiiifrica tliiit fvcrytliinj: tln'i-t' is Htatiuimry untl unchunm'd, iiiul
tiitit tli«' tiiiif ot'cvoliilititi uml iiiipiovciiifiit lias iiiii^siiict* Hct in Kiiropc^
to hi' foitiid iM»\v ""Illy ill Aiiiciicu. Says Mr. Clarke : " Tin; .St^'pluiison
t^pptMtt' on^riiH' niico tixfd Iiiih rciiiiiiiicd iiiicliaii<^cd in Kii rope, except in
dt'tail, to tin- pnstint day. Kumpran loemnotivt's have incnsased in
Weight and power, and in perlertion of material and workmanHJiip, but
the j;eneral features are tliose of the loeoinotives huilt hy the great firm
ol'(jieor<;e Stephenson iV Son hel'ore IHlO." So tar I'lom this heiiii; the
Case, the standard inline of the Stephenson works, Robert Stephenson
& Co., not (fcorjre Stepheiisoii & Son, from 18.'{7 to 1842, has been en-
tirely abandoned sinc(! 184-1, and although other builders continued
tliat exeelh nt ty|te for a number of years, and |M'rhups oceasionally do
so still, Stepheiisuii entirely i^ave it up alt< r their patent of 1842
came into use, and that styK; a;:;ain has sjnee been entirely aban-
doned. The Slepheiisoirs after ISIJl never had a monopoly of a loeomotivu
type. As before mentioned, liury's t.'U^ines always (ormed a separate
type, HO did the Allan \Hj(j^ne, or (Jrewe eni<ine of 1840, till the typo
of the Northern division of tin- North Western, of the Caledonian, and
some of the Fieneh railways. As fsir as tht; locomotive of different
c<iuutries is ooncrrned, the lixiilit}' of type, the^ah.senoe of cliaut;e, the
slavish following of pifcedent is to be seen now more in America than
any where. You travel from Ntnv Orleans to Montreal, from New
York to the I'acitic, and you .see nothiiiii; but the one type of locomotive
unchunged fur forty years, the .\meriean 8 wheel, 4 coupled driver, truck
engine, with inside frame and outside cylinders, with its Swedish iron lag-
gings, and its monotonous uniformity. In England, on the contrary,
the complaint justly made by a recent writer, that the type of locomo-
tives varies on every railway, is unfortunitt'ly hut too true, and the most
casual observer eannut but notice it. The dull red colored machine,
with its two eou{)led driving wheels and single leading wheel, heavy
outside frame entirely covering up t\u' inside cylinders and machinery,
which takes yon in 4A hours from Liverpool to London on the Midland,
is essentially different in design and arrangement from the bright greeii
outside cylinder engine with its one huge driver, 8 feet G inches in
diameter, of the Great Nortliern, or the North Western compound, with
its bright central polished cylimler cover, and its double 'uachinery,
each part working its sepaiate uncmipled drivihg whev... These three
locomotives are as distinctly different from each other as any one of
them is from the old Rocket, yet all running between the same
termini, and keenly coinjieting for the same traffic. It is difficult to
trace any resemblance hetween the Mediterranean engine of the great
French company or the Lombardo \'enetian, or the Belgian, yet all are
in a constant .state of alteration and struggle for improvement, and each
developing and evolving its own ty[ie of ideas, and improving its
own specific class of machine, although that improvement often, nay
always, leads to a further divergence from the common original and
from each other. The standard locomotive of the future has yet to be
designed.