240 History of Inland Transport 



competition between railways and waterways ; but other- 

 wise the Liverpool and Manchester differed from the Stockton 

 and Darlington, at the outset, and as a line of railway, only 

 in the fact that the former was to be provided throughout 

 with malleable iron rails, whereas the latter had two-thirds 

 malleable iron and one-third cast iron. On the one line as 

 on the other, the use of locomotives had not been decided upon 

 from the start ; and, unless the Liverpool and Manchester 

 had not only adopted locomotives but, as was, of course, the 

 case, improved on those of the Stockton and Darlington, it 

 would have shown little real advance in actual railway 

 operation. 



The motive power to be used on the Liverpool and Man- 

 chester remained uncertain when George Stephenson and his 

 " navvies " were attacking the engineering proposition of 

 Chat Moss. It was still uncertain in October, 1828 or two 

 years after the passing of the Act when three of the directors 

 went to Killingworth colliery, to see the early locomotive 

 which Stephenson had made there, and to Darlington to see 

 the locomotives then operating on the Stockton and Darling- 

 ton line. They decided that " horses were out of the ques- 

 tion " ; but even then the point remained doubtful whether 

 the Liverpool and Manchester should be provided with loco- 

 motives or have stationary engines at intervals of a mile or 

 two along the line to draw the trains from station to station 

 by means of ropes. How the directors sought to solve the 

 problem by offering a premium of ^500 for a locomotive which 

 would fulfil certain conditions ; how George Stephenson won 

 the prize with his " Rocket " ; and how the " Rocket," with 

 a gross load of seventeen tons, attained a speed of twenty-nine 

 miles an hour, with an average of fourteen whereas counsel 

 for the promoters had only promised a speed of six or seven 

 miles an hour are facts known to all the world. 



If the Stockton and Darlington Railway had had the 

 honour of introducing the locomotive, it was the Rainhill 

 trials, organised by the Liverpool and Manchester Company, 

 which gave the world its first idea of the great possibilities 

 to which alike the locomotive and the railway might attain. 

 In this respect the Liverpool and Manchester line carried 

 railway development far beyond the point already attained by 

 the Stockton and Darlington, although no fundamentally 



