1847.1 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



113 



HISTORV OF ENGINEERING. 



By Sir J. Rennie, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. 

 (^Continued from page 81.) 

 Railways. 



Whilst the turnpike road and coach system was rapidly advancing to- 

 wards perfection, nnmerous active and inventive spirits, aspiring after bet- 

 ter things, were bnsily employed in racking their brains to invent a mode 

 of travelling, or locomotion, which should far exceed its predecessors ; 

 great diliiculties however presented themselves — and amongst the agents 

 which were thought of, none appeared so well adapted for ihe object as 

 steam, the success of which, in the hands of Watt and others, had proved 

 so triumphant, wherever it had been applied; but, in order to attain the 

 wished for velocity, a ditTerent kind of road was required to that which 

 had hitherto been used: and at length the railway system was intro- 

 duced. 



Railways, formed with wooden rails, or parallel pieces of wood, with 

 carriages having wooden wheels to run upon them, had been in use at 

 Newcastle as fur back as IG81, for the purpose of conveying coal down 

 from Ihe mines to shipping-places on the banks of the Tyne ; Lahelye, in 

 1743, described improved carriages, used by Allen in stone quarries at 

 Bath, having wheels with flanges of cast iron, adapted to run on wooden 

 edge-rails ; being an improvement upon those at Newcastle ; afterwards, 

 the wooden rails weie plated with iron, which made the carriages run 

 more easily with a greater load; cast iron rails, or plates, were brought 

 into use for the first time by Reynolds of Colebrook Dale in 1767; and 

 more completely by Curr at Sheffield, with wagons having cast iron wheels 

 without flanges, the rails being in the form of tram pi ites ; and in 1769 

 Edgeworth introduced three or four wagons drawn in a train, by one 

 horse. These iron tramways, laid upon stone blocks, with the carriages 

 above described, having smooth-tyred wheels without flanges, came into 

 general use, for drawing coals, stone, and other minerals, from the mines 

 and quarries underground, and at short distances from canals; but no lines 

 of any great length were made for general traffic. The tirst line of any 

 any extent, it is believed, was that at Loughborough, by Jessop, in 1789 ; 

 also between t'ardifl' and Merthyr Tydvil, the act for which was obtained 

 in 1794; this was followed by the Croydon and Surrey railway between 

 Wandsworth and Merstham, in 1804 : for the periods, all these were con- 

 siderable works of the kind. About this time railways were used by the 

 contractors during the execution of great works, at the London, the East, 

 the West India Docks, and other places, where the transport of vast masses 

 of materials was required; when the works were completed, the rails or 

 plates, which were made with side flanges to keep the wheels in the places, 

 were generally sold, and were occa^^ionally used for constructing short 

 lines to canals and shipping places. The only power applied to draw the 

 wagons was that of horses. These railways were considered inferior to 

 canals, and were seldom used, except when the traftio was chiefly descend- 

 ing, so that the empty wagons could return with facility. 



Locomotive Eii^-ittes. — The application of steam power to the propulsion 

 of carriages might, it would seem, have naturally commenced with car- 

 riages on the common roads; but so many difficulties intervened, that the 

 attempt was not made until after it had been effected on railways. Dr. 

 Robison proposed it to Watt in 1769, and Darwin inentious it in 1796; 

 but the application of Newcomen's or Watt's engines, for propelling car- 

 riages, could not be attempted with any probability of success, as they 

 required copious and constant supplies of cold water for condensing the 

 steam, which would have rendered the machine so cumbersome and un- 

 wieldly as to be unmanageable. Watt's practice was to condense the 

 steam at a comparatively low temperature ; for aUbongh he tried it in 

 almost every state, from high to low pressure, he ultimately, under ail cir- 

 cumstances, preferred employing steam at about 3 lb. above the pressure 

 of the atmosphere. Amongst his earliest investigations he made a model 

 of a high-pressure engine, which acted very well ; and he described a high- 

 pressure locomotive engine in his specification of 1784; but he considered 

 steam at such a high pressure to be unsafe, and did not make any use of it. 

 I His assistant, Murdoch, afterwards made a working model of a locoino 



tive engine which acted very well, but he did not pursue it further. Leu- 

 pold had proposed a high-pressure engine in 1725; and one was made by 

 Cugnot at Paris in 1770 for propelling a carriage, but it failed entirely, and 

 was never used. 



Treviihick and Vivian obtained a patent in 1802. for high-pressure en- 

 gines, in one of which locomotion was to be produced by tiie adhesion of 

 the wheels, propelled by the engine working on the road. They also pro- 

 posed ribbed wheels with nails or bosses, for the purpose of enabling the 

 engine to ascend steep places. In 1804 they made a locomotive engine, 

 which travelled upon the MerthyrTydvil railway ; it consisted of one high- 

 pressure cylinder, with a fly-wheel, and four bearing-wheels, two of whicn 

 were turned by the action of the piston, and produced a velocity of five 

 miles an hour, drawing after it several wagons, containing a loud ol about 

 15 tons. This locomotive worked by adliesiiin alone. The experiment 

 was not continued, because the weight of Ihe engine, with its cast iron 

 boiler, was considered too great for the rails, and might have occasioned 

 considerable damage to them, and if the weight ot the engine had been re- 

 ilBced sufficiently, it would have been too iigiit,aud the v>lieeU would huve 



slipped upon the rails. Thus we see, that the great principle of adhesion, 

 for producing locomotion, was clearly understood at the outset, and was 

 only abandoned in consequence of the cast iron plate rails at that time in 

 use, being unfit for carrying it into effect. In addition to Ihe objection on 

 the score of the weight of Trevithick's locomotives, more serious opposition 

 arose against them in consequence of one of them having exploded in 1803. 

 This objection was made to all Trevithick's locomotive engines, although 

 ultimately they came into use. He had made an attempt to propel car- 

 riages on common roads by steam in 180i>, and constructed a carriaga 

 worked by steam, which was exhibited publicly, in the neighbourhood of 

 Bethlehem Hospital. Vo that ingenious and able man the origin of the 

 locomotive system may be said to be due. In 1811 Blenkinsop took out a 

 patent for using rails, having teeth like a rack in them, iuio which wheels, 

 having corresponding teeth, were worked by the engine, thus securing the 

 engine against the chance of slipping. This was brought into use for con- 

 veying coals from the Middletoa Colliery, near Leeds, which may be said 

 to have been the first practical employment of locomotive engines; but the 

 expense, friction, noise, and slowness of the motion, which scarcely ex- 

 ceeded four to five miles an hour prevented it from being generally adopted. 

 In 1813 Brunton took out a patent for producing locomotion by levers, 

 worked by the engine, resembling a good deal the motion of a horse. This 

 however failed, and a serious accident occurred by the explosion of Ihe 

 engine attached to it. Chapman followed, and patented an invention for 

 producing locomotion by means of chains laid along the line of road, pass- 

 ing round the wheels of the locomotive, and thus travelled forward. In 

 1813 Blackett resumed Trevithick's original plan, and constructed an en- 

 gine which worked by adhesion alone, upon the rails at the Wylam Col- 

 liery, at Newcastle. 



George Stephenson in 1814 improved upon all the former locomotives, 

 and look out patents in conjunction with George Dodd in 1815, and with 

 Losh in 1816. The locomotive, in his hands, soon became sufficiently per- 

 fect to be brought into general use on railways, for drawing coal wagons at 

 a greater rate than could be performed by horses. The weight of the en- 

 gine was sustained on the axles of the carriages, by means of small pistons 

 working in cylinders, supplied with water from the boiler, which acted 

 like so many springs. Two steam cylinders were employed, and all the 

 four wheels were impelled by them ; the engine was followed by a tender 

 carrying water and fuel. Here was a grand epoch in the history of rail- 

 ways, whicli were destined at no very aistant period to effect such a com- 

 plete revolution in the whole system of international communication, and 

 to realise such extraordinary results, as even the most sanguine minds 

 never anticipated. James, who had examined the machines, published a 

 letter in 1815, proposing railways as a general system for travelling. The 

 general introduction, in 1816, of the cast iron edge rails, and the flanged 

 wheels, which are said to have been invented by W. Jessop, long before, 

 on the Loughborough railway, instead of the cast iron tram-plates with 

 which the earlier railways had been laid, was soon followed by Ihe intro- 

 duction of wrought iron rails, in long pieces, at first, in plain rolled bars, 

 and afterwards rolled with projections on their upper edges, in order to 

 give breadth for the wheels to run upon, as well as to increase the strength 

 of the rails and enable them lo bear greater weights without yielding. 

 This was the patent invention of Birkenshaw, who made them in 1820. 

 The above were great improvements in ihe system, and by degrees, all the 

 details were worked out more eflectually at the different collieries near 

 Newcastle, and in the North, until the locomotives were so far improved, 

 as to enable them to travel at the rate of seven to eight miles per hour, 

 drawing considerable loads behind them. The Hetton and the Stockton 

 and Darlington railways, by Stephenson, which were opened about 1825, 

 contained all the improvements made up to that time ; and the last act of 

 parliament of the latter line authorised the use of locomotive engines. 



The Liverpool and IVIanchester Railvvay Company obtained their first 

 act in 1826, under the Messrs. Rennie, but the kind of tractive power to be 

 employed was left open for future determination. The railway works, 

 however, proceeded, and considerable progress was made before it was 

 decided what power should be employed. The company employed Messrs. 

 Walker and Rastrick lo investigate the different means employed in the 

 North as tractive power on railways, and to report which, in their opinion, 

 they considered best adapted for the railway; upon the whole, they re- 

 ported in favour of using stationary engines to draw the wagons and car- 

 nages. Stephenson and Rennie were in favour of locomotive power. The 

 dirt-ctors took up tiie matter with considerable spirit, and offered a reward 

 of five hundred guineas for the best locomotive engine. The competitors 

 for this premium were, Stephenson, Braithwaite and Ericson, and Hack- 

 worth and Biaiidreth. The weight of the engines was restricted to 6 tons, 

 including the wafer in the boiler, and tlie load was limited to three times 

 that weight, to be conveyed at the rate of at least 10 miles an hour. A 

 trial of Ihe engines of the three competitors was made on a part of the Man- 

 chester and Liverpool railway, in 1829, and the extraordinary speed of 

 between 20 and 30 miles an hour was realised by Stephenson's engine 

 ' Rocket.' So long as the motion upon the rails was produced by the 

 rack^diid pinion, ihe greatest velocit> attained scarcely exceeded 4 or 5 

 miles an liour; this was only adapted for the transport of heavy goods, 

 and the expense, except in few situations, preclmled it from being exten- 

 sively lirought into use ; but the principle of adhesion being established, 

 and 7 and 8 miles an hour obtained, the success of this great invention be- 

 came evident, and it was predicted that its adoption would be general. Still, 

 hovvever, doubt and prejudice prevailed with many, and amongst them 



IG 



