More than twenty years before the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway, the celebrated engineer Trevithick constructed, not only a
locomotive engine, but also a railway, that the London public might see
with their own eyes what the new high pressure steam engine could effect,
and how greatly superior a railway was to a common road for locomotion.
The sister of Davies Gilbert named this engine “Catch me who can.” The
following interesting account in a letter to a correspondent was given by
John Isaac Hawkins, an engineer well known in his day.
“Sir,—Observing that it is stated in your last number (No. 1232, dated
the 20th instant, page 269), under the head of ‘Twenty-one Years’
Retrospect of the Railway System,’ that the greatest speed of
Trevithick’s engine was five miles an hour, I think it due to the memory
of that extraordinary man to declare that about the year 1808 he laid
down a circular railway in a field adjoining the New Road, near or at the
spot now forming the southern half of Euston Square; that he placed a
locomotive engine, weighing about ten tons, on that railway—on which I
rode, with my watch in hand—at the rate of twelve miles an hour; that Mr.
Trevithick then gave his opinion that it would go twenty miles an hour,
or more, on a straight railway; that the engine was exhibited at one
shilling admittance, including a ride for the few who were not too timid;
that it ran for some weeks, when a rail broke and occasioned the engine
to fly off in a tangent and overturn, the ground being very soft at the
time. Mr. Trevithick having expended all his means in erecting the works
and enclosure, and the shillings not having come in fast enough to pay
current expenses, the engine was not again set on the rail.”