BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 
255 
on dead levels, at three and a half miles an hour. The engine 
weighed five tons, and its cost was about £400, to which must be 
added the expense of laying down a special tooth-racked rail. After 
they had been working fifteen months between Middleton and Leeds, 
the Brandling's took one to their collieries at Kenton and Cock's 
Lodge, in Northumberland, with sixteen waggons, weighing altogether 
seventy tons. The engine was set going, and the speed realised was 
not so great as was anticipated, owing to some partial ascents in the 
railway. Amongst the spectators of this experimental trip was 
George Stephenson, then engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery, who 
remarked that he could make a better engine than that to go upon 
legs, and how, with William Headley and others, he succeeded is 
now matter of history. Mr. Blenkinsop died at Leeds in January, 
1881, at the early age of 48 years, and was buried at Roth well 
Church. The engines continued to be employed in the haulage of 
coal at Middleton for many years, and furnished the first instance of 
the regular employment of locomotive power for commercial purposes. 
Mr. Embleton, who succeeded Mr. Blenkinsop in the management of 
the Middleton Collieries, made several improvements in the structure 
and working qualities of the engine, and to him is due the first con- 
ception of the idea of turning the steam into the funnel and so 
causing an increased draught, with greater consumption of fuel, and 
consequently greater power. 
