Rail, Steam, and Speed: The "Rocket" and the Birth of Steam Locomotion (review)
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Christopher McGowan draws together many sources on the British ur-history of the locomotive (at first, only an adjective) steam engine and its consequences. Among backgrounds to pioneering steam railroads, engines, and locomotive builders, the Rainhill locomotive trials in 1829 of the Liverpool and Manchester (L&M) serve as a means of integrating the overall subject and discussing Robert Stephenson's Rocket. Robert's father, the pioneering locomotive builder George Stephenson, was incensed when the L&M's consulting engineers recommended the use of stationary and not locomotive steam engines. Thus, at Rainhill, George defiantly operated Rocket for adulating crowds again and again. With its water-jacket firebox and many boiler tubes, Rocket was a modification of the Stephensons' Lancashire Witch and its return-flue and expansive-steam cylinders. The well-honed and -tested but ever improving locomotive designs of the two Stephensons set the enduring pattern for the external combustion engine on rails.
Having little advance notice and with no testing, contenders John Braithwaite and John Ericsson hastily erected their unconventional Novelty. The blower-drafted locomotive with its narrow boiler did not even look like such. Had it not sequentially failed with a broken blower, burst feed-water pipe, and collapsed flue, would the history of locomotives have been different? Would locomotives sound a characteristic "whoosh" instead [End Page 666] of chug, chug? Novelty, with its cranked axle and innovative ash-pan, rocketed faster than the Rocket, to everyone's astonishment.
McGowan succinctly covers early developments of the massive, low-pressure, stationary steam engines at the mines and the transfer of such technology, in 1804, to high-pressure railroad locomotives by Richard Trevithick, with his rail-breaking, flywheel model. Trevithick's technique of drafting the firebox with exhaust steam became a well-established principle, along with his feed-water pump furnishing boiler water through a unidirectional check valve.
The only other able contender at Rainhill was Timothy Hackworth's Sans Pareil, based on his earlier Royal George and needing pretrial repairs. Hackworth's constricted blast pipe sucked part of the coke fuel out of the stack; thus, the engine consumed three times the fuel and 20 percent more water than Rocket. In front of the grandstand, Sans Pareil's fusible plug (also developed by Trevithick) melted because of low water and pressurized steam and water killed the fire. A new plug was installed, but then the feed-water pump failed. The die was cast, whatever the reasons for failures of competing engines. The L&M immediately purchased Rocket and four improved sisters, each with eighty-eight boiler tubes. Two improved Ericsson locomotives were also purchased, but they were subject to steam failures and proved unsuccessful in service. A new design of the Stephenson locomotive, the large Samson with a cranked driving axle, proved superior to any other motive power in service. Thus, in 1831, the Stephensons justified the decision of the Rainhill trials.
Of interest are details about the early tasks of engine drivers and firemen and the rules infractions they devised. One engine crew reduced speed to two miles per hour in order to oil the journals of the cars while walking alongside. Another crew would cut the engine off in motion and leave behind the slowly coasting train of cars. After taking on water, the men would re-couple to the arriving cars. For increased power, some crews tied down the boiler's safety valve, and a handful of these men, accordingly, experienced fatal boiler explosions.
Few realized at the time that the railway age had dawned. But railways spread rapidly across the kingdom, united as never before by arteries of iron. Supplied from distant hinterlands, cities could now expand. With cheaper transportation, the price of raw materials and manufactures fell. Freight wagons, coaches, and much canal transport became redundant. The railway mania ushered in a new market paradigm in which everyone could become rich quickly, at least until the bubble burst.
McGowan...
