WHO BEGAN RAILROADS--"PUFFING BILLY."
Familiar as it has become to us, who does not stop to look with
interest at the puffing, snorting, screaming steam-horse? And who does
not rejoice in the iron-rail, which binds together with its slender
threads the north and the south, and makes neighbours of the east and
the west?
"Who _began_ railroads?" ask the boys again and again.
The first idea of the modern railroad had its birth at a colliery
nearly two hundred years ago. In order to lighten the labour of the
horses the colliers let straight pieces of wood into the road leading
from the pit to the river where the coal was discharged; and the
waggons were found to run so much easier, that one horse could draw
four or five chaldrons. As wood quickly wore out, and moreover was
liable to rot, the next step was nailing plates of iron on the wooden
rail, which gave them for a time the name of "plateway" roads. A Mr.
Outram making still farther improvements, they were called Outram
roads, or, for shortness' sake, "tram-roads"; and tramroads came into
general use at the English collieries.
"There's mischief in those tramroads," said a large canal owner,
foreseeing they would one day push canal stock quite out of the
market.
Improvements thus far had centred on the roads. To convey heavy loads
easier and faster was the point aimed at. Nobody had yet thought of
self-going teams. Watt, the father of steam-engines, said
steam-carriages might be built. He, however, never tried one; but
rather left the idea to sprout in the brain of an old pupil of his,
William Murdock, who did construct a very small one, running on thin
wheels, and heated by a lamp. It was a curious success in its way, and
set other minds thinking.
One of these was a tin-miner of Cornwall, Captain Trevethick, a friend
of Murdock, who joined a cousin of his in getting a patent for
building a steam-carriage. It was built, and an odd piece of machinery
it was. It ran on four wheels over a common road, looked like a
stage-coach, and delighted both the inventor and his friends. They
determined to exhibit it at London. While on its journey, driving it
one day at the top of its speed, they saw a toll-gate in the distance;
not being able to check it in time, bump it went against the gate,
which flew open in a trice, leaving the affrighted tollman, in answer
to their inquiries, "How much to pay?" only able to gasp out,
"No--noth-ing to pay--drive off as fast as you can! nothing to pay!"
It reached London in safety, and was some time on exhibition.
Multitudes flocked to see it, and some called it a "fiery dragon."
"Ah," said Sir Humphrey Davy, very much interested in the invention,
"I hope to see the captain's 'dragons' on all the roads of England
yet."
But the captain exhibited it only as a curiosity, the unevenness of
the roads rendering it for all practical purposes a failure; and the
captain had neither pluck nor genius enough to lay or clear a track
for it himself. This was in 1803.
The idea, however, was in England, lodging itself here and there in
busy brains; until at last a colliery owner in Newcastle, seeing the
great advantage of having a locomotive on his tram-roads, determined
to try what _he_ could do. Accordingly he had one built after the
Cornish captain's model. It burst up at starting. Noways baffled, he
tried again. The engine proved a clumsy affair, moved at a snail's
pace, often got off the rails, and at length, voted by the workmen a
"perfect plague," it was taken off. The unsuccessful inventor was
called a fool by his neighbours, and his efforts an apt illustration
that "a fool and his money are soon parted." In spite of failure, Mr.
Blackett had faith that the thing _could_ be done. He built a third,
and ran it on the tramroad that passed by old Bob Stephenson's cottage
door. And George at his colliery, seven miles off, as you may suppose,
listened to every account of it with profound interest. Over he went,
as often as he could, to see "Black Billy," a rough specimen of
machinery at best, doing very little service beyond what a good horse
could do.
George carried "Black Billy" back in his mind to Killingworth,
studying its defects and laying plans to improve it. I do not know how
long he was coming to it, but he at length gave it as his opinion that
he could make a better "travelling engine" than that.
Tidings came to Killingworth about this time that the trial of a new
engine was to take place on a certain day at Leeds, and George did not
lose the chance of being present. Though the engine moved no faster
than three miles an hour, its constructor counted it a success. It
proved, however, unsteady and unreliable, and at last blew up, which
was the end of it.
What did George think then? He more than ever wanted to try _his_ hand
at the business. Lord Ravensworth, knowing enough of Stephenson to
have faith in him, hearing of this, advanced means for the enterprise.
Good tools and good workmen were alike wanting; but after much
labour, alteration, and anxiety, in ten months' time the engine was
completed and put on the railway, July 25, 1814.
Although the best yet made, it was awkward and slow. It carried eight
loaded waggons of thirty tons' weight at a speed not above four miles
an hour. The want of springs occasioned a vast deal of jolting, which
damaged the machinery, and at the close of a year's trial it was found
about as costly as horse-power.
How to increase the power of his engine--that was the puzzling
question which George studied to answer. He wrestled with it day and
night, and at length determined to try again. In due time another was
built, "Puffing Billy," which most persons looked upon as a marvel,
but, shaking their heads, prophesied it would make a terrible blow-up
some day. "Puffing Billy," however, went to work, and worked steadily
on, a vast advance on all preceding attempts. It attracted little or
no attention outside the narrow circle of the collieries. The great
men of England did not know that in a far-off nook of the realm there
was slowly generating a power, under the persistent thought of a
humble working-man, which, before many years, would revolutionize the
trade of the kingdom and create a new source of wealth.
"Puffing Billy," in fact, humble as its pretensions were, has proved
to have been the type of all locomotives since.
Had George Stephenson satisfied himself? No. His evenings were chiefly
spent at home with his son Robert, now under him in the colliery,
studying and discussing together how to evoke the hidden power yet
pent up in "Puffing Billy." The son was even more sanguine than his
father, and many an amendment had "Billy" to undergo to satisfy the
quick intellect and practical judgment of the youth.
Mr. Stephenson, delighted with Robert's scientific tastes and skill,
and ever alive to the deficiencies of his own education, was anxious
to give him still further advantages. For this purpose he took him
from a promising post at the colliery and sent him to the University
of Edinburgh.
Here he enjoyed a six months' course of study; and so well prepared
was he for it by his wellformed habits of application and thinking,
that he gained in six months as much as many a student did in three
years. Certain it was his father felt amply repaid for the draft it
made on his purse, when Robert reappeared at the cottage in the
spring, with a prize for successful scholarship in mathematics. He was
eighteen then.