CATALOGUE OF THE MECHANICAL ENGINEERING COLLECTION. 63 

 EAILWAY LOCOMOTIVES. 



The first practical locomotive engine designed to run upon rails 

 was built in 1804 by Eichard Trevithick, a Cornish mine captain, in 

 southern Wales. In the same year Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, 

 Pennsylvania, built a steam dredging scow weighing about 4,000 

 pounds. To convey it from his shop to the river, he mounted the 

 scow upon wheels and propelled it by the steam engine. This was 

 the first self-propelled vehicle to run on American soil. 



While Trevithick's locomotive in itself was successful, the cast- 

 iron railway — the rail was an extended angle iron, having a 3-inch 

 face upon which the wheels ran, the vertical face acting as a guide 

 and being on the inside — proved faulty and broke continually, so 

 that from an economic point of view the locomotive was more 

 expensive than the horse. To devise a locomotive whose weight 

 would have sufficient adhesion and still be light enough to prevent 

 the breaking of rails engaged the attention of inventors for the next 

 twenty years in England. Thus John Blenkinsop in 1811 patented 

 a rack railway and locomotive and William Hedley in 1813 built a 

 locomotive named " Puffing Billy " which had smooth wheels coupled 

 together by gearing. It w-as the beginning of the grasshopper type 

 of engine which became the fashion until 1829. George Stephenson 

 in 1814 constructed his first locomotive, which was not a success, but 

 in his second he used the direct action of the connecting rods on the 

 driving wheels, and at first used coupling rods for connecting the 

 wheels, but later discarded them for chain gearing, with the result 

 that a successful type of locomotive was obtained and one superior 

 to horse traction. 



The results obtained by Stephenson's locomotive " Rocket." built 

 in 1829 for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, settled definitely 

 the relative merits of the steam locomotive and the horse-drawn 

 vehicle in favor of the former, and laid the foundation for the suc- 

 cessful future of railway transportation. 



In the United States railway developments paralleled those of 

 England. The South Carolina Railroad Co. was the first in the 

 w^orld to decide that its railroad should be operated by steam locomo- 

 tives. Its construction was begun in 1827, but delays prevented its 

 opening until after a portion of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was 

 in operation. The first locomotive on the American continent de- 

 signed to run on rails was bought in England and brought to this 

 country for the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co., while the first 

 American-built locomotive for actual service was designed by a 

 merchant of Charleston, South Carolina, was built by the West Point 

 Foundry, New York City, and tried out on the South Carolina Rail- 

 road in 1831. As early as 1812 John Stevens, of Hoboken, urged the 



