1818. J 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



299 



condensing-engine, made to draw water from the pit, and which 

 had gone wrong. After several fruitless trials to mend it, Ste- 

 phenson had the rashness to undertake the job, which he did fully 

 — and moreover made some improvements in the engine. Stephen- 

 son himself said"' that lie had made some improvements in engine 

 work. This, however, is sure — that he had got the trust of the pit- 

 owners ; and, having a better hope of livelihood, he gave up the 

 thought of settlement abroad, and made Killiugworth his home 

 for some time. 



When he was twenty-two years old, he wedded a young woman 

 of the nei^ibourhood ; and in 1803, his son Robert was born ; hut 

 •he had no other child. In the life of another man, the birth of a 

 child would not be worth naming ; but with his fatherly fondness, 

 the child became the apple of his life, until he grew up to be his 

 fellow-workman, to earn a great name, and to hold that standing 

 among the mighty of the land which the father would not take. 

 All went so liappily with George Stephenson, tliat everything 

 seemed to fit him. He was able to give his only son that breeding 

 and that schooling, which, if he had had many children, would per- 

 haps liave been beyond his reach — though it is hard to spell what 

 never liappened. Tliis, however, we may say — -that Robert Stephen- 

 son owes liis greatness to the unshared care of his father, who shaped 

 his mind from earliest years to the full strength of manhood. 

 Paintings have been drawn of the fondness felt by a mother in 

 watching the growth of an only son ; but there is something 

 dearer in the father, like George Stephenson, who, in the son of 

 his youth, not only sees, but shares, in the growth of a great and 

 maiilv mind. The mother can but be as a looker-on, and cannot feel 

 his deeds to the full ; but the father, whUe watcliing with the eye 

 of a master, takes share and part in tlie toil. To few men this 

 happens ; for, in the common way of things, a man weds late in 

 life, and the son comes upon the world only as the father is leaving 

 it, and before the strength of manhood has ripened to its full. 



The engineman had now become a stripling engineer, and began 

 to look out for a wider field. He seems to have tried his hand on 

 most kinds of colliery work. It is said tliat he laid down some 

 tramways, or wagon-ways as they are named in the north, and 

 made some improvements in them. ' ' 



He was now getting a good name among the neighbouring land 

 and coal owners, and had got on the high-road to engineering. 

 Instead of being pinned to the stake, as a workman by the day or 

 week, it was open to him to rise as others had done around him, 

 and to make his way as a mining engineer. The colliery school was 

 a better one for breeding great engineers than even that of Corn- 

 wall ; for it had all that Cornwall had, and more too. The Corn- 

 ishman could learn the steam-engine, pump- work, and mine sur- 

 veying ; he saw enough of sinking, and driving, and draining. 

 The Northumbrian, however, while he had all these to learn by, 

 having a greater bulk to move, had to look more to the roads and 

 ways on which so many thousand chaldrons were borne to the 

 sliip-side. Hence, in Northumberland, many men had turned their 

 skill towards the roads and wagon-ways, to the rails and sleepers, 

 and to the works and bridges by which they were borne over the 

 rivers and hollows. Both had the same school in the works of the 

 millwriglit and the iron-founder, but the Northumbrian was better 

 off; because, instead of the outaway, small towns of Truro, Red- 

 ruth, and Camborne, he had near him Newcastle, on the high road 

 from London to Scotland ; and having its booksellers, schools, and 

 men of learning. He was much nearer to the world than his 

 Cornisli brother, truly at the Land's-End. The north, therefore, 

 has given us more civil engineers than the west, tliough the latter 

 has its Trevithick and its Woolf. 



By Lord Ravensworth, and others, Stephenson was employed in 

 putting up steam-engines, and sloping planes under-ground ; and 

 in one pit, two or three engines were made to do the work of 

 nearly 100 horses.'^ 



We have seen that Stephenson had a love of knowledge, by 

 what he had learned with AVood ; and we know that lie must have 

 schooled himself much at this time, from what he soon afterwards 

 did. It is true, he was not fond of reading, but he always liked to 

 know everything thoroughly ; and he did not leave out anything 

 whereby what he undertook could be well done. It was always 

 his wish to go to the ground-work, and to build steadily up ; and 

 he had a great dislike for those engineers who undertake anything 

 carelessly or rashly. As he himself said,'' he had too "frequently 

 noticed the miscalculations of hundreds of engineers, for want of 

 studying the laws of mechanics, and knowing that a pound could 

 only weigli a pound." It was on that sound knowledge that his trust 

 in himself in after-life was built, and that he was able fearlessly to 



16 Trent Valley Meeting. 

 i 8 Derby Reporter. 



1 7 Gateshead Observer. 

 1 s Trent Valley Opening. 



stand up before the House of Commons and the people, in his great 

 struggle for the locomotive against the lights of the day. 



III. THE LOCOMOTIVE. 



Stephenson was now getting beyond his thirtieth year, his mind 

 strengthened by knowledge, and by the trust that what he might 

 do would reap its full reward. His child was growing up to boy- 

 hood, while his earnings were still so slender that he could do but 

 little for his schooling. He had at this time felt bitterly his own 

 want of learning, and he made up his mind that he would put his 

 son to a good school, and give him good breeding. " I was, how- 

 ever," said he afterwards at a meeting at Newcastle,^" "a poor man ; 

 and how do you think I did } — I betook myself to mending my 

 neighbours' clocks and watches at night, after my day's work was 

 done ; and thus I got the means of bringing up my son." This he 

 might well say with boasting, for it is one of the bright lights in 

 his life. 



The great draught of coal on the tramways, and the heavy trains 

 which went forth from the pits, had set the minds of many at work 

 to use steam instead of horses to draw the loads. The stationary 

 engine worked well on the incline, but tlie steam-horse was called 

 for to run throughout from the pit's-moutli to the ship's-side. In 

 1758 or 1759, Dr. Robison, then a young man, had hinted to Watt 

 to put steam to work wheel-carriages.-' AVatt, however, had other 

 things on his mind, though he named it in his patents of 1769 

 and 1784; but as Watt had a dislike for high-pressure steam, that 

 may be one cause why he never made a locomotive.-- 



About 1763, John Theophilus Cugnot, a Lorrainer, showed a 

 model of a steam-carriage to the Count de Saxe. He afterwards 

 went to Paris, and got the help of the Duke de Choiseul. In 1769 

 he built an engine at the cost of the king, and it was tried in 1770. 

 It moved with such strength, that it knocked down part of a wall 

 which stood in its way ; therefore some thought that the power was 

 too strong to be kept within bounds, and not fit for common use.-^ 

 It is said the engine was given up and put in the Arsenal Museum, 

 and is now kept in the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. It 

 would be worth while for any engineer who may be in Paris to 

 look after it. 



In 1782 or 1792, Murdoch made a model of a steam-carriage at 

 Redruth. This was perhaps the beginning of Trevithick's, who is 

 said to have been brought up under Murdoch, and who knew him 

 well. 



In 1786, Oliver Evans laid a plan for steam-wagons before the 

 commonwealths of Pennsylvania and Maryland, and the latter 

 gave him a privilege for fourteen years — yet he was never able to 

 get money enough to build a wagon. All that he did was in 

 180+ to put wheels on a steam dredging-machine he had made for 

 cleansing docks, and which he made to move slowly, though in 

 a cumbersome way.^* 



On March 24, 1802, Trevithick and Andrew Vivian took out a 

 patent,-^ which amongother things was for the use of high-pressure 

 steam for carriifges, and by which the weight of the engine was 

 brought very low. A carriage was made and run in Cornwall, and 

 afterwards in London. Another was made in 1804 in South Wales, 

 which was worked on the Merthyr Tydvil Railway, and " drew 

 after it as many carriages as carried ten tons of bar-iron, from a 

 distance of nine miles, which it performed without any supply of 

 water to that contained in the boiler at the time of setting out ; 

 travelling at the rate of five miles an hour."^'' The engine had an 

 eight-inch cylinder, and the piston a four-fe«t six-inches stroke.'^' 



These engines fell into dislike, from the one on the Merthyr 

 Tydvil railway blowing up,-* having been made (against Trevithick's 

 orders) without a safety-valve, and likewise from the wrong belief 

 which got about that the wheels had no bite on the rails, and could 

 not work up a slope.^® 



One of Trevithick's engines was sent, singularly enough, to 

 George Stephenson's birth-place, to Mr. Blackett, of Wylam ; and 

 thus it came within his sight. "This happened most strangely, and 

 most luckily, for the mind of Stephenson was now brought to bear 

 on the great work of his life. The finding of Trevithick's model 

 by Uville was strange, and most fruitful in the deeds it brought 

 about ; but perhaps we owe more to the Wylam engine. On some 

 ground or other, the engine does not seem to have been put to 

 work on the tramway, but was used to blow a cupola in an iron- 

 foundry at Newcastle'.^' This engine had one cylinder only, and a 



2 Newcastle and Darlington Opening. 21 Kobison's Mechanical Philosophy. 

 22 Penny Cyclopaedia.— Art. ** Steam-Carriage." 23 Stuart's " Steam-Engine." 

 24 Mechanics' fliagazine, No. 372. 25 Repertory of Arts, 2nd ser., vol. iv., p. 241. 

 26 Wood on Railroads, 1st edition, p. 127. 2 7 Stuart's Steam-Enginc, p. 460. 

 28 Railway Register, vol. V. 29 Lardner on the Steam- Engine, 1840, p. 33(). 



3 Stuart's Anecdotes of the Steam* Engine.— Civil Engineer's Journal, "Life of 



Trevitbiclf." — Railway Register, vol. v. 

 3 1 Wood on Railroads, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition, — 2nd edition, p. 129. 



39* 



