Railways
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Railways’
William Murdoch’s experiments with steam traction impressed his next-door neighbour, with world-changing results.
The clever hand-powered wooden tricycle that a young William Murdoch built with his father made a triumphant reappearance many years later as a miniature steam-powered vehicle. That in turn led to the railway revolution – courtesy of his next-door-neighbour.
The little County Durham line built by George Stephenson and his son Robert was the place where the world’s railway infrastructure really began.
George Stephenson had already built over a dozen steam locomotives and engineered colliery railways at Killingworth in Northumberland, and Hetton in County Durham. Now his growing reputation had brought him another challenge, a little further south at Shildon, and on September 27th, 1825, the world’s railways began to take their now familiar shape.
There was one form of power that self-taught engineering genius George Stephenson never harnessed.
Robert Peel, the Prime Minister, had to invite Stephenson to his private residence three times before the Tyneside engineer accepted, pleading that he was not suited to fancy company. His visit, when it finally took place, only confirmed something he had long suspected.
Railways not only brought fresh, healthy food to the urban poor, they improved the conditions of working animals.
In the 1850s, London could not house enough cows for its population, so dairymen watered down their milk from cholera-infested roadside pumps, adding snails or sheep’s brains to thicken it (more). No legislation could have solved that dilemma of supply and demand. But railways did.
Richard Trevithick’s boss hailed the engineer as a genius. Today he’d have been fired. (Oh, and the train was delayed.)
Richard Trevithick neglected the job he was hired for, and diverted Research and Development funds into a hare-brained private project to get a steam engine to haul itself and some waggons along a railway not designed for that purpose. In 1803, his boss hailed him as a genius. Today, he’d have been fired.