The First Train Journey by Steam
Richard Trevithick’s boss hailed the engineer as a genius. Today he’d have been fired. (Oh, and the train was delayed.)
1804
King George III 1760-1820
Richard Trevithick’s boss hailed the engineer as a genius. Today he’d have been fired. (Oh, and the train was delayed.)
1804
King George III 1760-1820
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.
IN 1803, the owner of the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil, Samuel Homfray, brought Richard Trevithick over to South Wales to build a steam-driven hammer for his factory.
Instead, Trevithick mounted his steam engine on wheels and set it running along the factory’s primitive railway.
An excited Homfray made a bet with his fellow businessman, Richard Crawshay, that Trevithick's engine could propel itself and ten tons of iron 9¾ miles along the Merthyr Tydfil Tramroad, and then bring the empty wagons back again.
On 21st February 1804, Trevithick’s ungainly engine, all flywheels and pistons, justified Homfray’s confidence.
It took four hours and five minutes, at not quite 2½ mph; the five ton engine cracked the fragile cast iron rails as it ran;* and a boiler leak meant that the return journey was not completed the same day.
Even so, it was the very first railway trip by steam locomotive. History had been made.
In 1981, a replica was built for the Welsh Industrial & Maritime Museum in Cardiff. It broke the rails there, too.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
How did Trevithick’s engine differ from the one he was employed to build?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Trevithick was employed to build a stationary engine. He built an engine that could move itself. His employer approved.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IBlessing. IIInstead. IIIMind.