709 



STEPHENSON, GEORGE. 



STEPHENSON, ROBERT. 



7.0 



In 1816 therefore lie took out a patent for an improved form of rail 

 and chair, and for further improvements in the locomotive engine, 

 one of which was placing it on springe, and they were attended with 

 marked success. 



The construction of railroads had for some time occupied much of 

 the public attention. The first contemplated was the Stockton and 

 Darlington, for which an act of parliament was obtained by Mr. 

 Pease in 1820, to be worked "with men and horses, or otherwise." 

 In 1819 the owners of Hetton Colliery, desiring to turn their tranaroad 

 into a railway, employed Mr. Stephenson in its construction. The 

 length was about eight miles, and being over a hilly country he took 

 advantage of the heights to form self-acting inclines, the locomotive 

 working on the level part ; and on the 18th of November 1822 it was 

 opened for traffic. He waa next employed to construct the Stockton 

 and Darlington line, which the proprietors had agreed, on his recom- 

 mendation, to make as a railroad and not as a tramroad, with 

 stationary engines for the steep gradients, but horse-power was to be 

 used for the levels, for Mr. Stephenson's confident anticipations of the 

 success of his locomotive engines were still regarded with suspicion. 

 He began the work in May 1822, in 1823 an amended Act was procured 

 for working the line with locomotives, and Mr. Stephenson was 

 appointed resident engineer at a salary of 300. per annum, upon 

 which appointment he removed to Darlington. The line was opened 

 in September, 1825, and an engine driven by Mr. Stepheuson himself 

 drew a load of ninety tons at the rate of a little more than eight miles 

 an hour. It proved highly remunerative, for besides a far larger 

 amount of goods traffic than had been calculated on, a passenger traffic 

 arose that had been wholly unthought of; the passengers however 

 were for a time conveyed in carriages drawn by a horse at a speed of 

 ten miles an hour. It may be mentioned, that this railway has created 

 the town and port of Middlesborough-on-Tees, then the site of a farm, 

 but now containing 15,000 inhabitants. 



In 1824, while the Darlington line was in progress, Mr. Stephenson, 

 feeling the difficulty he had experienced in constructing his engines 

 in a blacksmith's shop, proposed to Mr. Pease, of Darlington, his 

 firm friend and great patron, the establishment of an engine-factory 

 at Newcastle. The proposal was adopted, and for a considerable time 

 it, was the only manufactory for locomotives in the kingdom; it is 

 now increased to an enormous extent, and has been the training-school, 

 whence has issued a vast number of skilled workmen and eminent 

 practical engineers. 



In 1824 the project of a railway, or tramroad between Liverpool and 

 Manchester began to be agitated. Increased facility of communication 

 was imperatively required, but there was much controversy as to the 

 means. At length a railway was decided on, Mr. Stephenson was 

 employed to make the survey, and application was made to parliament 

 for an Act. A strong opposition was raised both within the House of 

 Commons and without. Landowners drove the engineers off their 

 grounds, and before the Committee the most absurd objections were 

 urged against the whole scheme, the idea of any quick transit being a 

 subject for especial ridicule. The Bill was however carried on a second 

 application, and Mr. Stephenson was appointed principal engineer. The 

 work was commenced in June 1826, and after struggling through many 

 difficulties one, and not the least, being the carrying the railway over 

 Chat Moss it was opened on Sept. 15, 1830. During its progress 

 eminent engineers had reported against locomotives being worked on 

 the line, recommending horse-traction ; but at length Mr. Stephenson 

 prevailed on the Directors to offer a prize for a locomotive engine, con- 

 forming to certain conditions, which was done, and the prize of 50QI. 

 was won by the Rocket engine, in the construction of which he had 

 availed himself of the assistance of his son Robert. 



From this moment his fortune was made. Employment of a most 

 remunerative character poured in from all sides. Railways were pro- 

 jected in every direction, and he became the chief engineer of several 

 of them. With these he was incessantly engaged till 1840, when he 

 resigned most of them, and settled at Tapton in Derbyshire, where 

 he commenced a fresh pursuit in working the Clay Cross collieries. At 

 this time he took much interest in the well-doing of the Mechanics' 

 Institutes in his neighbourhood, and on more than one occasion related 

 to them the circumstances of his own career, as an encouragement to 

 the members to adopt a course of steady and persevering industry. 

 His interest in railway extension however continued unabated, and he 

 took an active part, either as engineer, chairman, or shareholder, in 

 the Whitehaven and Maryport, the Yarmouth and Norwich, and the 

 Newcastle and Edinburgh East Coast Line, with which the stupendous 

 work of the High Level Bridge at Newcastle (designed by his son), 

 is connected ; he was one of the committee of management, but ho 

 did not live to see it completed. He was also employed in Belgium, 

 and he travelled into Spain to inspect a proposed line from the 

 Pyrenees to Madrid, but the project was fruitless. On his return 

 from Spain in 1845 he relinquished still more his attention to railway 

 matters, and occupied himself almost entirely with his collieries 

 and lime-works, with the cultivation of his farm and gardens, and 

 indulged in his old fancy for keeping birds and animals. With the 

 exception of promoting the Ambergate and Manchester Railway, 

 inventing a new self-acting break, of attending the ceremony of opening 

 the Trent Valley Railway (when Sir Robert Peel made a speech com- 

 plimentary to him), and of being considerably troubled by applica- 



tions for assistance and advice from projectors and inventors of all 

 kinds, to whom however he was invariably attentive and kind, he 

 passed the remainder of his days in ease and peace, and died after a 

 short illness on August 12, 1848, leaving a name rendered illustrious 

 by the patient perseverance of a high-minded industry, and the widely- 

 developed productions of a remarkable genius. A valuable biography 

 of this eminent man has been written by Mr. S. Smiles, to which we 

 aro indebted for many of the facts in this notice. 



*STEPHENSON, ROBERT, the son of the preceding, was born, as 

 we have already said, at Willington, on December 16, 1803. His 

 father, who had felt the want of early education, resolved that his son 

 should not suffer from the same cause, and accordingly, though at 

 the time he could ill afford it, sent him to a school at Long Benton, 

 and in 1814 placed him with Mr. Bruce at Newcastle. Robert soon 

 displayed a decided inclination for mechanics and science, and becoming 

 a member of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Institution, 

 was enabled to take advantage of its library ; so that, as the Saturday 

 afternoons were spent with his father, the volume which he invariably 

 took home with him, formed the subject of mutual instruction to 

 father and son. Robert's assiduity attracted the attention of the 

 Rev. Wm. Turner, one of the secretaries to the Institution, who readily 

 assisted him in his studies, and was also of much service to his father 

 with whom he soon after became acquainted. Under Mr. Bruce, Robert 

 acquired the rudiments of a sound practical education, and under his 

 father's direction was always ready to turn his acquirements to account. 

 There still exists in the wall over the door of the cottage at Killing- 

 worth, a sun-dial of their joint production, of which the father was 

 always proud. In 1 818 Robert was taken from school and apprenticed 

 to Mr. Nicholas Wood as a coal-viewer, acting as under-viewer, 

 and making himself thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and 

 processes of coal-mining. In 1820 however, his father being now some- 

 what richer, he was sent to Edinburgh University for a single session, 

 where he attended the lectures of Dr. Hope on chemistry ; those of Sir 

 John Leslie on natural philosophy ; and those of Professor Jamieson on 

 geology and mineralogy. He returned home in the summer of 1821, 

 having gained a mathematical prize, and acquired the most important 

 knowledge of how best to proceed in his self education. In 1822 he 

 was apprenticed to his father, who had then commenced his locomotive 

 manufactory at Newcastle, but after two years' strict attention to the 

 business, finding his health failing, he accepted, in 1824, a commission 

 to examine the gold and silver mines of South America, whence he was 

 recalled by his father when the Liverpool and Manchester railway 

 was in progress, and he reached home in December 1827. He took 

 an active part in the discussion as to the use of locomotives on the 

 line, and in conjunction with Mr. Joseph Locke, wrote an able 

 pamphlet on the subject. He also greatly assisted his father in the 

 construction of the successful engine, which we believe was entered 

 in his name, though he himself ascribes the merit entirely to his 

 father and Mr. Henry Booth, on whose suggestion the multitubular 

 boiler was adopted. 



Robert Stephenson's next employment was the execution of a 

 branch from the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, near Warrington, 

 now forming a portion of the Grand Junction Railway, between 

 Birmingham and Liverpool. Before this branch was completed, he 

 undertook the survey and afterwards the construction of the Leicester 

 and Swannington Railway, and on the completion of that work he 

 commenced the survey of the line of the London and Birmingham 

 Railway, of which he was ultimately appointed engineer, and removed 

 to London. Under his direction the first sod was cut at Chalk Farm 

 on June 1, 1834, and the line was opened on Sept. 15, 1838. Fully 

 aware of the vital importance of obtaining good means of rapid transit, 

 he still continued to devote much of his time to improvements in the 

 locomotive engine, which were from time to time carried out under 

 his direction at the manufactory in Newcastle, which for somo years 

 was exclusively devoted to engines of that class, and still supplies 

 larger numbers than any other factory in the kingdom, independent of 

 many marine and stationary engines. His engagements on different 

 lines of railway have since been very numerous, but he is more 

 remarkable for the magnificent conceptions and the vastness of some 

 of his successfully-executed projects, such as the High Level Bridge 

 over the Tyne at Newcastle, the viaduct (supposed to be the largest 

 in the world) over the Tweed valley at Berwick, and the Britannia 

 tubular bridge over the Menai Strait a form of bridge of which there 

 had been previously no example, and to which, considering its length 

 and the enormous weight it would have to sustain, the objections and 

 difficulties seemed almost insuperable. With the assistance however 

 of Professor Hodgkinson, Mr. Edwiu Clark, and Mr. Fairbairn in 

 experiments on the best forms of the various portions of the struc- 

 ture, the difficulties were triumphantly overcome, and in less than 

 four years the bridge was opened to the public on March 18, 1850. 



Mr. Stephenson has also been employed in the construction of many 

 foreign railways. He was consulted, with his father, as to the Belgian 

 lines ; also for a line in Norway between Christiania and Lake Miosen, 

 for which he received the grand cross of the order of St. Olaf from tbe 

 king of Sweden ; and also for one between Florence and Leghorn, 

 about sixty miles in length. He visited Switzerland for the purpose 

 of giving his opinions as to the best system of railway communica- 

 tion. He designed and is now constructing the Victoria tubular bridge 



