474 History of Inland Transport 



attained a speed of over twenty miles an hour. There were 

 even those who anticipated that steam-carriages on roads 

 would be successful rivals of the locomotive on rails. Alexander 

 Gordon, civil engineer, and an ardent supporter of steam- 

 driven road vehicles as against railways, wrote in "An His- 

 torical and Practical Treatise upon Elemental Locomotion by 

 means of Steam Carriages on Common Roads " (1832) : 



" It will be found that, with the exception of the Liverpool 

 and Manchester line, and of those lines formed solely for the 

 purpose of conveying heavy materials on a descending road, 

 railways are, at least, of very questionable advantage where 

 there is the possibility of having a good turnpike road and 

 steam carriages. . . . Rail-roads have a very formidable rival 

 in steam communication upon the common road, and the 

 latter is of vastly greater advantage than the former." 



Opposition, however, to steam-driven road coaches was 

 hardly less vigorous than the opposition offered to the rail 

 locomotive itself. Not only were obstructions constantly 

 placed on the roads to prevent the steam-coaches from passing, 

 but country squires, horse-coach proprietors, post-horse 

 owners and representatives of the turnpike road interests 

 combined to show the most active hostility to the new form 

 of locomotion. The turnpike road trustees sought to make 

 the running of the steam-coaches impossible by imposing pro- 

 hibitive tolls on them. It was shown in evidence before a 

 Parliamentary Committee that where on the road between 

 Liverpool and Prescot horse-coaches would pay a 43. toll, the 

 steam-coach was charged 2. 8s., while on other roads the tolls 

 in the case of the latter were equally extortionate. 



There were pioneers in those days who devoted time, toil 

 and fortune to attempts to establish steam locomotion on the 

 roads, only, one after the other, to retire from the contest 

 discomfited and impoverished. 



Among them was Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, who laboured 

 for five years and expended ^30,000 on his attempts to bring 

 steam-carriages into practical and permanent use. Finding, 

 at last, that the turnpike trustees controlled the situation, 

 Gurney and other steam-carriage builders petitioned Parlia- 

 ment to investigate the subject of the opposition shown to 

 them, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons was 

 appointed for this purpose in 1831. It reported in favour of 



